Flesh Eater (Dalca 1)
by griffyn612
Summary: Rău Dalca is no hero. In a world full of monsters, he's one of the worst. But when a greater evil threatens to rend flesh and spill blood, the devil you know becomes the savior you need… even if hiring him costs you everything.
1. Chapter 1

Title: Flesh Eater

Author: Griffyn612

Rating: PG-13

Canon: Book

Spoilers: Spoilers through _Dead Beat._

Warnings: Contains mild violence and language

Setting: A fan story of the Dresdenverse. Most characters are new, with a few known characters interspersed.

Timeline: This story takes place eight months after _White Night_ , seven months after _Fire Bird_ , and ten months before _Small Favor_ and _Smoke Rings_.

Disclaimer: _The Dresden Files_ is copyright Jim Butcher. This story is licensed under the Creative Commons as derivative, noncommercial fiction.

Chapter 1

Rău Dalca pushed a button on a key-less remote, and waited.

His blue eyes shifted back and forth as he looked across the street, watching for any response. The transmitter was nothing more than the typical auto remote, save for some slight modifications. Cars slowly trundled by, their headlights briefly illuminating his blond hair and pale face as Dalca wandered about, seemingly lost as he pointed the remote in different directions. To anyone watching, it might look as if he were trying to locate his car by triggering the horn.

Instead, Dalca watched the townhouse out of the corner of his eye, and waited.

After five minutes, it became clear that nothing was going to happen.

Perfect.

A soft swooshing sound accompanied the arrival of a navy-skinned vâlvă. The small fairy landed on his shoulder and immediately fell into a crouch. The two illicium atop her forehead bobbed as she stood upright, flicking her long dark braid of hair back and forth to shake loose a snowflake that had dared to land upon her.

"It's done," the slight figure said, her slim form no larger than a plastic G.I. Joe figure. Dalca couldn't see her well with his peripheral vision, but knew her black eyes were focused on him. "No sign of the mortal authorities."

Dalca spared a glance at the fairy, watching as her gliding fins folded down flat against her back. They were similar to those of a flying fish, although their coloring was a pearly opalescence that even the most beautiful butterfly would be envious of.

The custom clothing she wore was suited for warmer climates, leaving her arms and back bare so that her wing-like fins were unimpeded. Small gills opened and closed routinely where one might expect to find ears, and the webbing between her clawed digits was bunched tightly as she absently rubbed her hands over her arms. She shivered in the cold as she grimaced in frustration, exposing sharp teeth not unlike an anglerfish as she fought off the chill.

The water vâlvă didn't like the Copenhagen winter, but wouldn't voice her displeasure. She simply took it out on the frozen precipitation falling around them. Her narrow tail absently slashed back and forth, the barbed end cutting snowflakes in two.

"Humans are so predictable," Dalca said with a dark smile as he started toward the townhouse.

The remote had triggered a device he'd installed on the telephone line two days prior. With the push of a button, he was able to cut or restore the phone service to the entire block. Doing so triggered the alarms for the townhouse and several other residences, of course, which resulted in a police presence within five minutes.

Dalca had triggered the alarm several times over the last couple of days, causing numerous visits by the local constabulary. Frustrated by the seemingly troubled system, the alarm companies had finally suspended the accounts until a technician could find the problem.

Mara had taken care of the other half of the communication problem. With the air filled with moisture from the pending storm, the water fairy had used her magics to form bubbles around the nearest cell tower transmitters. The dense spheres of humidity were enough to dampen the signal, while leaving the equipment itself undamaged.

The only thing remaining was for the internet, which Dalca took care of by depressing a second button on the remote. He could almost hear the frustrated groan of several hundred people as they suddenly found themselves without any means of communication. It was likely fewer than that, given the hour, but no-one in the area would be able to call out for help for a short time.

Which meant Dalca was free to complete his work.

He slid the remote into a pocket of his black peacoat, the collar of which was raised against the frigid Copenhagen wind. His dark boots carried him surely across the slick road, cold enough to freeze had they not treated the surface in preparation for the threatening winter storm. Several inches had already fallen earlier in the evening, and a few flakes were still swirling errantly in the air. It was but a minor precursor to the blizzard the weathermen assured them was coming.

Reaching the corner, Dalca spared a glance at the three-story townhouse. It might as well be called a mansion, considering its location and square footage. The façade consisted of earth-toned river-stones and a wood frame that had been stained in dark chocolate. There was a wrought-iron gate surrounding the stunted yard, and stone steps lead up to the thick mahogany door.

Dalca climbed the steps quickly and rang the bell. As he did, Mara disappeared in a flash, too fast for even Dalca's eyes to track. Several seconds passed before the heavy door opened about a foot, revealing a scowling man dressed all in black. There was a scar along the left edge of his lip, and another at the corner of his right eye. He was bald and clean-shaven, and very much looked the part of hired muscle.

Said muscle was thick beneath the black shirt he wore, his large frame likely approaching three hundred pounds. He didn't even make an effort to conceal the pistol holstered under one arm, and one of his pants pockets bulged where he'd stashed a spare magazine.

"Hvad gør du want?" the man asked. It took Dalca a moment to mentally switch to Danish, but he didn't need to translate the look the bodyguard was giving him.

"I am sorry to insect you," Dalca replied in the same language, albeit with some perfectly understandable and predictable translation issues for someone not native to the region. Humans were easy to confuse, and always had been.

A pleasant aroma drifted from the open door, and Dalca smiled as he recognized it. "I seem to having misplaced my rabbit."

The thug's frown deepened, as if he wasn't quite sure how to respond. Perhaps he was trying to figure out if there was a protocol for missing rabbits. His eyes looked quizzically into the unexpected visitor's, which meant the guard missed the shift of Dalca's right forearm as the thin black-bladed stiletto slipped into his palm.

"Did you say rab—" was as far as he got before Dalca's arm rose, casual save for the speed at which it moved, shoving the sharp point of the slim round blade into the man's neck.

The move was well-practiced, slicing through his vocal chords on its way to the guard's spine. The man's eyes widened as the blade punched through bone, the movement quick and impossibly powerful.

"Yes, my rabbit," Dalca replied calmly as he stepped forward, lifting with his right arm. The small cross-guard of the stiletto disappeared into the folds of the man's neck as he pushed upward, keeping the man upright by strength alone. "He is having run about."

A gurgle escaped the dying man's lips as Dalca pressed forward, entering the townhouse. As he did, he felt the ripple of a weak threshold press against him. It was like walking into a stiff oncoming wind. Had the home owner been a family man, the sensation would have been stronger. If he hadn't chosen to run his business from the townhome, it might have been enough to actually limit Dalca, or possibly even keep him out altogether.

As it was, the intruder only felt an intangible pressure as he stepped inside; as if a bubble had formed around him, sealing Dalca off from his power and forcing him to call upon his reserves. The more he tried to use, the more it would cost him.

But he wouldn't need much. Not for this job.

He kicked the door shut with one foot while reaching inside his peacoat with his left hand. Dalca's strength didn't waver despite the threshold, and he held the man aloft with ease. The guard swayed in midair, pinned upon the small blade, as blood began to run down his throat.

"Jørn, is everything alright?" another man called as he stepped into the foyer of the mansion. He was dressed similarly to the first guard, although he lacked the scars and muscle that made Jørn look so menacing.

"I am missing my rabbit," Dalca informed him, peaking around Jørn's shoulder. From behind, it must have looked like Jørn was keeping Dalca from proceeding further into the house. And perhaps the ruse would have lasted longer, had the second man not noticed Jørn's dangling feet.

"I'm sorry?" the second guard replied with an understandable frown as he stepped forward.

"Do not having been sorry," Dalca replied. He moved his right arm, shifting Jørn's dead weight aside in the process. "I think I smell him."

The second guard's reaction time was slowed by his shock, his eyes widening as he noted the blood covering Jørn's front. His hand moved unconsciously to the gun holstered at his waist, but he was too slow.

The Luger in Dalca's left hand coughed softly, the toggle sliding backward and up as the spent shell popped free. There was no suppressor on the gun, nor was there a need for one. The spellwork on the barrel all but silenced the shot, the air magic dampening the sound without slowing the bullet. It struck the guard in the forehead at full speed, killing him instantly. He fell backward even as Dalca turned his right wrist, letting Jørn slide to the floor.

The killer stepped further into the foyer, admiring the rich interior as he walked toward the back. The tapestry hanging along the right wall was tacky but expensive, and would have fetched a fortune at auction before Dalca absently ran the stiletto across it, the tip cutting the fabric while leaving a bloody smear in its wake.

"What is—" another guard asked as he walked out of a side room. His words ended along with his breath as Dalca blindly fired another round, once again killing with a single shot. The guard toppled to the side as Dalca glanced into what appeared to be an old fashioned library. He liked the interior; the walls were a light cream, which contrasted nicely with the dark woods of the built-in bookshelves. The chairs and couch were leather, which was unfortunate. But the furniture itself was all dark wood. Decent taste, all things considered.

Dalca continued on, making his way through the house. Another guard fell with a bloody gurgle as he rounded a corner, finding Dalca's stiletto buried in his throat before he'd known the intruder was there. The killer slashed the blade to the side as he continued, causing blood to spurt over an ugly carpet that had no business covering the exquisite wood flooring.

At the rear, Dalca found the kitchen, where a chef and maid were just beginning to suspect something was amiss. Both gaped as Dalca looked about, appreciating the marble surfaces. His Luger coughed twice more, and he made sure that the rounds buried themselves in their hearts. It'd be a shame to have the bullet pass through them cleanly and risk hitting the fine cabinetry.

Dalca began to turn back toward the front, but the aroma wafting from the pot that simmered atop the large stove drew him across the room.

"There you are, little rabbit." He retrieved the wooden ladle the chef had been using to stir the stew, and brought a sample to his lips. "Tasty," he said with genuine admiration, complementing the dead chef.

Replacing the ladle, Dalca turned the heat down on the stew, and then resumed his journey through the mansion, killing everyone he found.

On the second floor, the toggle of the Luger popped back, the last round in the magazine spent. Most of the remaining security lay bleeding in the hallway, although two were still standing. Dalca slipped behind a door-frame as the guards' guns barked, the wood and plaster popping and splintering as they carelessly shot up the beautiful home.

They were using mundane suppressors, which meant they were loud enough to attract attention. The killer might have worried about the police arriving before his bloody work was done, had he not taken precautions.

Instead, Dalca calmly slid the empty magazine out and replaced it with another. He was just putting the first away when a slight vibration in his pants pocket surprised him.

He slipped a hand into the pocket, his fingertip tapping a smooth stone even as he heard the pounding heartbeat of the brave guard approaching. Dalca reached around the door-frame, firing blindly at the frantic beat. The fast pulse disappeared.

"Dalca," he said aloud as he turned, returning to the hallway. The last guard in the hall was retreating backward toward a doorway when the killer's sudden appearance startled him. The man emptied his pistol in a panic, and Dalca felt his flesh tighten as a bullet grazed his left arm as he returned fire.

"Damnit," he muttered as he inspected the damage done to the coat and shirt. As he tugged at the holes, he wasn't surprised to find a distinct lack of blood. The round had merely glanced off his skin as it hardened reflexively under assault. It was just shifting back to a more human shade of flesh when he strode past the dying guard.

" _I have a need of your services_ ," a deep male voice said, echoing from nowhere. The cadence was proper and cultured, although the voice and accent were disguised by magical means.

"What time frame?" Dalca asked as he continued down the hall.

" _Immediate_ ," the voice replied.

"That will cost you," Dalca advised the disembodied voice. "My time is spoken for."

" _This takes precedence_ ," the other man responded, sounding somewhat impatient. " _There is a potential breach_."

Gunfire erupted out of a doorway to the left, and Dalca drew up short of the opening. "That'll cost even more."

" _I won_ _'_ _t haggle with you_ ," the voice replied with disgust. " _We have an arrangement. I will hold you to it_."

"I WILL DRÆBE YOU, RØVEN!" someone shouted from within the room. The English spoken by the disembodied voice had broken Dalca's concentration, and his grasp of Danish slipped.

"Røven?" Dalca repeated softly, pondering the word.

" _Excuse me?_ " the voice replied, sounding offended.

"Not you," Dalca explained as he mentally translated the insult. "Although not entirely inaccurate."

" _…_ _what are you doing?_ " the man finally replied, even as the shouting continued from the side room. Shots accompanied more insults, riddling the hallway with bullet holes and curse words.

"I'm working," Dalca informed him. He cocked his head to the side and listened. The shots had finally died off, allowing him to hone in on heartbeats. There were four within the room. All of them were fast and frantic, although two less so than the others. That would be the two closest to the door; no doubt the last of the hired muscle.

" _How long will you be?_ " the voice asked, clearly frustrated.

"Not long," Dalca assured the man, even as he stepped around the corner and fired twice. The last two guards fell, leaving only one older fat man, and the sweet young thing he'd brought home for an evening's entertainment.

" _Contact me when you_ _'_ _re finished_ ," the disembodied voice instructed. And with a silent pop of pressure, it was gone.

"…SKIDE KUSSE! _"_ the fat man shouted as he finished reloading a revolver. A shot from the Luger pierced his wrist, and the larger gun flopped to the floor as the man screamed in pain.

"Watch your language in front of a lady," Dalca scolded him. The killer glanced at the young girl, all but naked as she prepared to earn her pay. He'd watched the target come home with the prostitute, who's unfortunate choice of clientele had sealed her fate.

Her dress and heels had already been carefully draped over a chair, leaving her nearly nude as she cowered on the far side of the bed. She was pretty, for a human, and Dalca quickly came to a decision.

"P-Please…" she began, stuttering nervously as she stared at him with wide eyes.

Dalca waved a hand in her direction, whispering " _Niālu_ ," as he did. The spell was costly within the home's threshold; doubly so because mental magic wasn't natural to Dalca. But it was enough to cause the girl's eyes to flutter closed as she collapsed to the floor.

"FUCK!" the fat man shouted, holding his wrist. He'd missed the exchange with the girl, as his attention was solely on his pain. Dalca saw him think about going for the gun he'd dropped, but then thought better of it.

"Thorvald Bendtsen," Dalca said as he stood over the man. "The Dahls send their regards."

"Fuck you!" the fat man spat, a nervous perspiration breaking out over his scalp. "I stole nothing! What did I steal?! Nothing!" His train of thought seemed to waver as he looked back to his wrist, the blood loss and fluttering pulse causing him to pale noticeably.

"I don't give a fuck what you did or didn't do," Dalca said honestly. "The Dahls paid for your death."

"I will pay you more!" the man said quickly. "Whatever they—"

The Luger whispered again, the bullet taking the fat man in the throat, cutting off his words. He fell back, blood spilling from his nicked external carotid artery. His face went slack as his veins were quickly drained. Limbs flopped helplessly as gore spurted across the ghastly shag carpet of the bedroom.

Dalca watched until the thready pulse finally gave out. He cocked his head and listened, making sure no-one else was present in the house. After a moment, he was sure that the only living things were him and the girl.

He made his way to her, and tilted her head around as he whispered, " _Ēru_. _Šamu_."

The girl's eyes slowly blinked open, the disorientation from the spells causing her to look around with obvious confusion. The first woke her from the sleep spell he'd hit her with, while the second made her compliant. Dalca made sure his blue eyes were what she fixated on, and poured power into his words. " **Get dressed and come with me**."

The girl moved to obey. Young enough to still be enrolled in college, her body was lithe and toned, and Dalca admired her as she slipped her dress back on. Her eyes were glazed when she turned back to him, and he led her downstairs, making sure her attention was on him, rather than the bloodbath around them.

Stumbling after him, the girl accompanied Dalca as he headed for the kitchen. She stared mutely as he ladled some soup into a container, her eyes not drifting to the bodies on the floor.

A few minutes later, they left through the front door. There was little time to waste, as the neighbors were no doubt frantic to reach the authorities to report the suppressed gunfire.

The bubble that had locked away his power burst as he exited, and a pleased smile graced his lips as he took in a relieved breath. He hadn't been in any danger from the guards, but he didn't like feeling powerless. It was just so… inconvenient.

The girl clung to Dalca's arm as he closed the door after them, careful not to drop the tupperware. He had to balance things for a moment while he retrieved the car remote, and then he pressed the buttons a second time. Phone and internet services would return after just a few moments, which meant it was time to go.

The small blue fairy alighted upon his shoulder as he reached the street. "Cell service is restored," Mara said as her tail thrashed out at an arrant snowflake. She gazed at the girl for a long moment, before her eyes settled on the tupperware. "What is this, meals on wheels?"

"I thought I'd partake," Dalca said, before wiggling the tupperware. "Thought you might like something as well."

Mara just snorted, her flat nose flaring at the effort. "What is it?"

"Rabbit stew," Dalca replied as he strode down the sidewalk, the girl stumbling beside him. The wind picked up as he went, and the foretold snowstorm started as sirens began to sound in the distance.

The water vâlvă looked doubtfully at the girl. "And that?"

Dalca simply shrugged his shoulder. The girl shifted beside him, her body clinging to his in the cold. Her gaze was still vacant as he led her away. "Waste not, want not."

The three disappeared into the night, as the wail of the sirens grew closer.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

A short time later, Dalca strode from the second bedroom of his hotel suite and into the main living space. He was feeling full and refreshed after his first round with the girl as he made his way toward the kitchenette.

The lights in the room were off, leaving the space shrouded in darkness, save for the faint glow from the streetlights. He was nude, having already discarded everything he'd worn to the house into a steel trash bin. The light from the street shone across him, seeming to make the extensive tattoo across his left arm and shoulder ripple as he moved.

Full from his meal, he headed for the kitchen, where he poured himself a brandy from the fully stocked stores. He spotted the remnants of Mara's rabbit soup, although the water vâlvă was nowhere to be seen.

Sipping on the brandy, Dalca retrieved the shiny rock from the front table, and settled into a comfortable chair.

The stone was smooth to the touch, well polished without any trace of imperfection. It was ovoid in shape, and the light seemed to disappear into it. Dalca ran his fingers along it, triggering the spell laid into the communication stone. He closed his eyes, and the sights and sounds of the suite and the city beyond faded away.

He found himself in a dark place. His senses told him that he was no longer in the hotel, even though he knew he was. Those unfamiliar with communication stones sometimes struggled with differentiating the real world from the mindscape of the stone. What was said and done in the dark place was heard and seen there, and only there, while the body remained inactive. In time, some could learn to split their mind well enough to control both.

With a practiced hand, Dalca reached out for the brandy glass in the real world and brought it to his lips. His body in the dark place, a wispy shadow of himself, did not move. He drank from the glass in the real world, and waited for his client to arrive.

Less than five minutes later, a light appeared, illuminating a figure clad in dark robes. A heavy cowl hung over the head of the man before him, obscuring his face and identity.

"I take it you're finished?" the man asked, clearly annoyed by the delay. It was the same disembodied and unidentifiable voice Dalca had heard earlier. But despite the man's precautions, Dalca knew exactly who he was dealing with.

"With that job? Yes," Dalca confirmed. "Although I have some things lined up over the next several days."

"Those will have to wait," the cloaked man insisted.

"My other clients aren't sympathetic to your needs," Dalca replied lazily. "Some might even pay me double to _not_ help with a breach."

The cloaked figure's voice grew firm. "You said you would not discuss our business—"

"Relax, Little Hawk," Dalca said, cutting the man off. The figure tensed at the use of the nickname, but Dalca continued before he could say anything. "No-one knows of our arrangement."

"If they did, our 'arrangement' would come to a quick and definitive end," the man replied darkly.

"Yes, yes," Dalca said with a role of his eyes. He picked up the brandy again and swirled it before taking another sip. "Beware the wrath of the mighty wizard. See me quake in fear of your incredible power."

"Have a care, Dalca," the man said, his tone growing dangerous. "Your petulance is only tolerated so long as you remain useful. Those that disappoint her don't do so a second time." The cloaked head tilted forward slightly. "Even those of your kind."

Dalca's eyes narrowed, unamused at the tone the man was taking. "What is the job, wizard?"

"Our mutual acquaintance has pinpointed a potential breach. One that needs to be dealt with swiftly and thoroughly. No exceptions."

"Why hasn't Winter handled it?" Dalca asked.

"You know perfectly well that those responsible for such things are all but useless these days," the cloaked figure replied. "Even more so than usual, with the Handmaiden incapacitated, and the Queen's duties doubling."

"Why not send one of the White Council Wardens to deal with it?" Dalca asked. "Assuming you still have some pull with them?" he added, quirking a blond eyebrow.

If the man was insulted by Dalca's questioning of his influence, he didn't let it show. "Doing so would be troublesome. The regional commander in that area was only recently appointed, and cannot be relied upon to act in our interests."

"A useless warden?" Dalca asked with amusement. That had been almost all of them, in Dalca's experience.

"Useful, yes. But to whom?" the man posited. "That is the question; one that I do not have time to have answered now. Not with a potential breach."

"So what's the situation?" Dalca asked. "Where am I headed?"

"White River, Ontario," the cloaked man replied. "A small township just north of Lake Superior. Less than a thousand living in the town; closer to half that, from what I understand."

"Never been there," Dalca mused.

"It seems English is the primary language, with a smattering of French used," the man advised him. "You should have no trouble with either."

"What's the situation?" Dalca repeated.

"Reports of missing townspeople," the man replied. "Our contact passed through earlier today, and could sense the darkness that has descended over the town. They said it felt… alien. They spied about, and found that several families have gone missing."

"Would they recognize the magics involved with a breach?" Dalca asked.

"Undoubtedly" the man replied. "As you know, there is a certain… emptiness, when it comes to breaches. One that matches what they described."

"What about the Senior Council?" Dalca pressed as he took another sip of brandy. His mindscape form didn't move. "Do I need to worry about them sending anyone?"

"No," the man replied. "As far as I can tell, no-one has detected the breach. I'd prefer for them to remain ignorant."

"What about that chap with the eye?" Dalca asked. "Doesn't he pick up on these things?"

The cloaked head slowly shook back and forth. "He is not infallible. I have taken precautions to ensure the White Council does not get involved, as long as you can expedite matters."

"Because if they did, you'd have to worry about this new warden?" Dalca surmised.

The man inclined his head, the shadows beneath the illuminating light shifting slightly. "I will not risk his involvement with a breach. And they would undoubtedly send him to investigate." The cloaked figured cocked his head. "I don't want any dead wardens, useless or otherwise, because they realized who you were."

"Alright," Dalca said. "Any idea what kind of breach? Just how bad is it?"

"I have no way of knowing," the man said, sounding irritated. "I have not had time to make extensive inquiries. The local fairies seem to have fled, which is what alerted our acquaintance."

"Sounds fun," Dalca said with a dark smile. "As long as you can afford me."

"You know money is of no concern," the wizard said. "Our acquaintance will pay whatever is required. As for the rest… you can have your fill of those involved."

Dalca's grin widened. "No exceptions?"

"Only those involved _directly_ ," the man clarified, sounding only slightly disgusted. "No by-standers."

Dalca's grin faded. "That might not be much, considering the mortality rate around breaches."

The cloaked figure was silent for another minute. "Very well. To compensate, I will provide you with information."

At that, Dalca's eyes narrowed in suspicion. "What information could you have that _I_ would want?"

"You'll find out when you complete the job," the figure replied. "But you have my word that the information is… relevant to your interests."

The wizard's words had Dalca intrigued. There wasn't much in the world that he really cared about, which the cloaked figure knew. What could he know that would mean anything to someone like Dalca?

"I'll leave first thing tomorrow; travel will be impossible tonight due to a storm."

The figure nodded, and the light illuminating the man began to fade. Before it disappeared completely, it surged back, and Dalca looked again upon the cloaked figure. "Wear the cloak," he said. "And mask the sword, just in case," he added, before finally disappearing. Dalca terminated his own connection, finding himself back in the hotel suite.

A moan sounded from the other room, and Dalca rose from the chair. Tossing the communication stone onto the table, he headed for the second bedroom, taking another sip of brandy as he did.

The girl he'd taken from the townhome was sprawled nude across the bed. The light from outside swirled as the storm surged, causing shadowy snowflakes to drift across her sweaty form.

Her eyes fluttered, unfocused and glazed with lust as he approached the bed. As he grew closer, he extended his right hand out, his fingers brushing against her ankle. At his touch, the girl gasped and shook.

"Not much to you, was there?" Dalca asked softly as he slowly walked alongside the bed. His fingers trailed along her leg as he made his way up. Goosebumps sprang up beneath his fingers as the girl's hands clutched at the sheets.

The girl shook as her eyes clenched shut. A high-pitched moan escaped her lips as Dalca spent a sliver of power. Sensual bliss spread across her entire body as the spell worked its way through her. She was awash in wave after wave of lustful spasms. Dalca heard her heart-rate increase as her gasping breath grew more rapid.

Learning how the White Court vampires manipulated their prey had been costly, but entirely worth it. The girl was so wrapped up in pleasure that she did not realize that Dalca was slowly killing her.

"There now," he whispered as her hedonistic gaze focused on him. She didn't have the strength to move, to try and escape from the monster that had her. Nor did she want to. All she desired was to continue feeling the most satisfying experience of what would be her short life. "There's still a spark left, isn't there?"

He sat beside her on the bed, careful to avoid the bloody smear that had formed along one side of her neck. He'd healed the slim gash he had cut into her vein once he'd stopped feeding, but some had still found its ways across the white sheets.

The girl was almost as pale as the linens, and as Dalca cradled her neck to lift her again, he knew she wouldn't last for a third round.

"Do not worry," he assured her softly. "It will be but a moment longer."

While her mind might not have understood what he wanted, her body did. As he leaned forward, the girl tilted her head to one side, exposing her neck. She knew that the greatest pleasure came to her when he kissed her throat; that was all she needed to know.

As her lust grew, so too did her her heartbeat. And with it, what spirit that remained within her surged up, flaring bright for one last moment. The power inherent to all mortal life infused her blood as he stoked her into a lecherous frenzy.

Dalca smiled a satisfied smile as he traced a finger along her vein. The girl shivered again as the digit stroking her grew, the flesh darkening to a red that was nearly black. Dalca's nail thickened and sharpened as he ran it across her skin.

When the vein tore open, Dalca's head descended to close over the wound, to draw out the blood that carried with it the life force he craved.

Weak and powerless, the girl wasn't all that filling. But he drank from her anyway. It was not desire that drove him, but need. A need for the spirit infused in her blood. Spirit that would fuel him, nourish him, until he could feed again.

All too soon, it was over, and Dalca sat back, savoring what little the girl had provided. The heartbeat faded from his hearing, and he sighed as her last breath escaped as a contented whisper. The blissful look on her face remained once the spark was gone. A painless end to life was the least Dalca could do.

"There, little one. You are free of it."

Dalca turned away then. As he gazed out the window at the raging storm, savoring the power he'd taken, his thoughts drifted to the wizard's job. To a place called White River, Ontario. To a possible breach, and everything that entailed.

He wondered if any of the men and women of White River were blessed with power, _real_ power. Power to not just sustain him, but make him stronger.

And if so, which of them would soon be his?


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3

The morning came quickly, and Dalca prepared to journey across the globe.

He'd contacted the one client who'd have to wait until after he'd handled the breach. The issue wasn't time sensitive, and the promise of a discounted rate was enough to appease them.

He didn't have much to pack, as he always traveled light. All of the clothes he'd worn the previous night had been purchased solely for the job, and were nothing but ashes in the trash tin. He'd hoped to keep the jacket, but the damage done by the bullet made it worthless. Even the boots had been thrown in, and the burned soles filled the space with a rancid smell.

Dressed in stylish but comfortable clothing, he only had a large carry-on bag and a large rectangular case to take on the private flight he'd requested. His small arsenal was packed away along with a few spare sets of clothing. It would be enough to see him through a few days.

The phone on the desk rang as he placed his things by the door, and Dalca crossed the room to answer it. "Yes?"

" _Your car will be here in fifteen minutes, sir_ ," a deep and charming voice declared in Danish. It was the familiar baritone of the hotel's concierge, filled with all the pomp and polish one would expect of the most expensive of establishments.

"Excellent," he replied. "I'll be down in a moment."

" _Did sir happen to catch the morning edition?_ "

"I did not," Dalca replied as he snapped his fingers in Mara's direction. The blue-skinned fairy was just finishing the leftovers from the previous night's stew. Dalca had been correct in assuming the vâlvă would appreciate it. "What's of interest, Mathias?"

" _Sir would be interested to know that a local businessman and several of his associates were killed in his residence last night_ ," Mathias reported with an indifferent air. " _Witnesses have placed a tall, spare man of pale skin and hair at the scene. The police are making inquiries, and have released a sketch_."

"Thank you, Mathias," Dalca said. "Please hold the car if I'm not down by the time it arrives."

" _Of course, sir._ "

Dalca placed the phone back on the cradle as Mara drifted over. The gliding wings of the vâlvă weren't great for actual flight, but they were enough to get her where she needed to be. "It seems I'm due for a make-over."

Dalca settled back into a chair and watched through half-lidded eyes as Mara rubbed her tiny hands together. He felt a trickle of power as she did, something wholly different from his own. Her black eyes studied him for a moment, and then with a twitch of her gills, she went to work.

She started with his hair. Dalca felt her sharp claws as they traced over his scalp. Power rippled out, and a tingling sensation ran across his skin as she manipulated his appearance with her magics. What had been a light blond business cut twitched and shifted, darkening as it grew. Within moments, his hair was past his shoulders, and as dark as the rich woods he'd admired in the townhome the night before.

The vâlvă didn't stop there, and Dalca remained still as the fairy's power coursed over his face. His clean jawline was quickly obscured by a thick dark beard. He didn't need to run his hand through it to know it'd be as neat as a barber's cut, but he did so anyway. As he stroked the beard, he caught sight of the pale skin of his hand, which was rapidly growing tan.

In just a few minutes, Dalca went from looking like a poster-child for the Aryan race to a weathered man of Mediterranean descent.

"I.D.," Mara said once she was done, holding her tiny hand aloft.

Dalca withdrew his wallet from his breast pocket and passed over the identification card the vâlvă had so painstakingly prepared. "Who am I today?" he asked as she took the card that was almost as large as she was.

The fairy bent at the knees before leaping into the air, her incredible strength sending her up and across the room. Her gliding fins snapped out as she went, and with experienced ease, directed herself toward the front table.

Dalca rose and finished gathering his things as she worked. At her touch, the ink of the Liquid-ID flowed and swirled, until the face on the card matched the features she'd just finished adjusting. "Eren Marina," she replied as she inspected the card, making sure everything was correct.

"Ah. Marina," Dalca said with a smile. "Always liked that one."

He studied the mirror near the door, and familiarized himself with what was, for the moment, his appearance.

Nothing had changed, really. The same results could have been achieved given time, a tanning bed, contacts, and a bottle of hair dye. But where such things might look unnatural upon close inspection, Mara's work would stand up to scrutiny. No-one would doubt that his natural hair color was a brown so dark it might as well be black. No-one would doubt that he and his ancestors had spent generations working under a harsh sun to achieve such skin tone. No-one could say that those dark eyes were crafted by colored lenses, or those faint wrinkles weren't earned by years of experience.

And no-one could possibly hope to mistake him for a pale, blond-haired killer.

"Alright. Let's go," Dalca said as he grabbed his things. Mara returned his card to him before disappearing in a flash. After tucking it away, he headed out, looking to all the world like someone that hadn't slept soundly in the master bed while a dead body began to rot in the other room.

* * *

Dalca stopped at the concierge desk on his way out, where Mathias pointed out his car.

"As you requested, I arranged for a private flight. The car should get you there in plenty of time despite the snow. Is there anything else I can do for you, sir?" the well-dressed man asked, his dark eyes playing over Dalca's altered appearance without the slightest hint of surprise.

"I'm afraid the suite will need to be tidied up," Dalca replied.

"Everything will be taken care of, sir," Mathias assured him.

"Thank you, Mathias," Dalca said as he withdrew a gold coin from a pocket. He slid it across the desk, where it was taken up with a grateful nod.

"Our pleasure as always, sir," the concierge replied. The man glanced down at the coin, which didn't match any man-made currency to be found. The odd coin seemed to reflect a golden light across the concierge's eyes as he studied it with a pleased smile.

And for just a second, something dark shone through. Something that turned his smile into a leer, and turned his gaze menacing. Something twisted, and cruel, and altogether inhuman.

It was gone as the coin slipped into Mathias' pocket, and all that remained was the prim and proper concierge of a high end hotel nodding to Dalca as he made his way out.

* * *

White River, Ontario wasn't much to look at. With only a few hundred residents, and little to attract visitors, it was about as unremarkable as towns came.

There were only two motels in town, both of which sat alongside the Trans-Canada Highway. Choosing the one closest to the residential area, Dalca found that the parking lot had more snow than vehicles as his rental Land Rover pulled in. The odds were good that those spending the night were simply travelers passing through, rather than the rare winter tourist looking to visit the home-town of Winnipeg, the black bear that had inspired stories about a bear named Pooh.

Dalca had researched the township briefly after the plane had made its first stop. It'd taken all of three minutes to read everything there was to know. It wasn't isolated, seeing as it was sandwiched between the highway and a well-used railroad. But that didn't mean it saw much in the way of visitors or business. Not a single stoplight graced the town, and Dalca was mildly surprised they had their own provincial police station.

The small one-story building was his second stop after getting a room at the motel and dropping off Mara. While it wasn't actively snowing, the air was considerably colder than it had been in Copenhagen, and the water vâlvă was quite miserable. She volunteered to hold down the fort and see if the local fairies had indeed fled, just as Little Hawk's contact had said.

It was early in the evening, but as Dalca made his way into the police station, he found the front desk was still manned. A grizzly bear of an officer rose as Dalca stomped the snow off of his new boots. He'd bought more cold weather gear after touching down in Kapuskasing, to at least look the part of a mortal dealing with a bad patch of weather, even for a town that'd declared itself the 'Coldest Place in Canada'.

"What can I do for yeh?" the cop asked as he looked Dalca up and down. The badge on his chest identified the man as Officer Tremblay, who was ready with a critical frown, which Dalca countered with stoic disregard.

"Marina, RCMP," Dalca said as he drew out his ID and a billfold that identified him as a member of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. "Following up on the reports of missing town-folk?"

Tremblay studied the badge and paperwork, and dutifully took it to run it through the computer. Dalca waited for him to finish, which took a while. It seemed the police of White River were working with something just a little better than dial-up, and the cop spent the time studying Dalca.

"I thought you lot were arriving tomorrow," the burly officer said as he waited for the website to load. "And I thought they were sending a full team."

"They are," Dalca said smoothly. "I got pulled in from another case, and the rest will be joining me tomorrow."

The cop grunted in acknowledgment, although his eyes still held too much suspicion. When the page finally loaded, Tremblay started punching in the information from Dalca's card. That took forever, since he was a two finger typer.

An exorbitant period of time passed as they waited for the verification to come through. Dalca spent it looking anywhere but the officer, who openly stared at the stranger. When it finally finished, the cop compared the picture on his screen with the one on the Liquid-ID, and then with the live version standing before him.

All three matched, as they'd all been created within a few hours of each other. As hard as it might seem to impersonate a Mounty, all it took was money and resources. Dalca had both, and a call to a North American acquaintance had arranged for Eren Marina's information to be added to the ranks of the RCMP's digital database. The same acquaintance had forwarded along the file attached to the case, which was scheduled to be reviewed by RCMP agents within several days.

But Dalca was surprised to hear that they would be arriving the next day. The report he'd received that morning was clearly out of date, and he hated working with incomplete information. Not to mention that the arrival of the real Mounties would cramp his own investigation.

The confirmation from the RCMP website seemed to put the cop at ease, and he passed the information back over. "Sorry. The sheriff told us to watch out for reporters trying to horn in for information on the disappearances. We've done our best to keep it under wraps so far, but it's going to get out."

"Always does," Dalca sympathized as he put his identification away. "What's the latest?"

"Two more families went missing this morning," Tremblay informed him. "That puts us at a total of five, plus Ol' Frank."

According to the report Dalca had read, Ol' Frank Lee had gone missing a little over a week prior. The notes on the report said that wasn't altogether suspicious, as the homeless man tended to drift from town to town, hitching on the train whenever he felt like begging in greener pastures.

But whenever Frank left, he took his scant few belongings with him. So when the police found his things in his normal hidey-hole, they grew suspicious, but not enough to worry.

That is, until whole families started disappearing.

"I hadn't heard about the latest two," Dalca said with a frown. "All I'd heard about were Gagnon, Wilson, and Li."

Tremblay nodded. "Charles Smith was a no-show at work today. When the sheriff went by the house, he found it empty, just like the others. Cheryl and the son, Stan, were missing as well. Same for Mr and Mrs. Lam, and young Garth."

Dalca thought back on the report. "That brings the total to… what? Sixteen, including Frank?"

"That's right," the large cop replied with a nod. "Ten adults, six kids."

"The first after Frank was the Wilson's and the Li's?" Dalca recalled.

"Phan and Demi Li didn't show up for work Monday, and Mary wasn't at the bus stop," Tremblay explained. "The house was cold by the time we went around that afternoon. As for the Wilsons, that's only Craig and little Jean."

"The mother's not in the picture?" Dalca asked.

"Nah, she took off years ago," Tremblay said. "Works for the railroad. She sends enough child support back to keep Jean fed and Craig in his drink."

"The report said Jean didn't show up for school either?" Dalca asked.

"She and Mary have both been out since Monday," the cop replied. "At first we thought Jean might have hopped a train to visit her mom, and maybe Craig went with her, or after her as the case sometimes is. They've done that before. But with the others missing…"

"Right," Dalca said, nodding. "Do you have the work-ups for the two latest families? And the addresses for the rest?"

"Sure," Tremblay replied. He pushed back from the desk to retrieve the files. "You want to start tonight? I can call the sheriff in."

"No, I'll just look over the info tonight, and we'll begin tomorrow when the others arrive," Dalca lied.

Tremblay nodded, and went to go make copies. When he returned, he passed them over to Dalca, who skimmed them quickly before zipping up his jacket. "I'll be at the motel. Room twelve, down at the end," he informed Tremblay. "Give me a ring if anything else comes up before tomorrow morning."

"Will do."

Tremblay gave him an friendly wave as Dalca headed out, and the impostor wondered at how agreeable the cop was being with a Mounty. Jurisdictional conflicts in real life weren't nearly as difficult as the movies and shows made them out to be, but locals tended to want to control as many aspects of an investigation as possible.

As Dalca made his way to the Land Rover, he had to wonder if maybe one reason why the locals were so eager for help was the aura permeating the town.

Most mortals had some level of sensitivity when it came to feeling the supernatural. For some in the small township, it might not be anything more than a vague sense of something in the cold winter nights. A foreboding impression of pending danger that they couldn't quite attribute to any tangible cause. For others, it might be enough to keep them on edge, on guard for something actively lurking in the shadows.

Dalca's own senses were picking up on it, although he was sure it wasn't quite the same as what mortals felt. He was used to the feel of dark and twisted things; it was what _he_ was, after all.

But the thing in the town wasn't like him. To be more accurate, it wasn't like anything born of the mortal world. It was a darkness that corrupted reality by its mere presence, and Dalca was sure it was growing at that very moment, like rotten tendrils worming its way through the town.

It was most assuredly a breach. A hole ripped into space and time, letting something through that ought not be. Something that had claimed sixteen people in half as many days, and was only getting started. Something so dark and twisted that it made a monster like Dalca look like a saint.

Something from Outside.


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter 4

Rather than return to the hotel to collect Mara, Dalca made his way across the highway and into White River proper. His GPS managed to lead him to the addresses provided by the police, which he visited one by one.

The first place he stopped at was the Li household, one of the first families to go missing. From the street, the place did indeed look quiet. The porch light had been left on, and the cars were in the driveway, just where they were supposed to be. With it being early evening, one might believe that the lack of interior lights could be attributed to the residents calling it an early evening.

But the cars were covered in snow, as was the path leading up to the house. Days old footsteps had mostly filled in with fresh precipitation, making it clear that no-one had been in or out for a while.

Dalca climbed out of his rental and cut his way through the drifts, the highest of which almost reached his knees. Climbing the steps, Dalca looked in through the window beside the door to see a dark and empty house.

As Tremblay had said, the place seemed cold. But unlike the police, Dalca could confirm that without setting foot in the place.

With a slow blink, Dalca's eyes shifted. His pupils rippled as they elongated vertically, their shape widening and tapering several times from top to bottom. There was a reptilian look to them, one that would unnerve the bravest of mortals if they got close enough to witness the change.

Dalca studied the home, and to his eyes, the place was a water-color painting of dark blues and darker blacks. It was a cold and empty husk of a house, with no thermal signature visible through the windows, nor leaking from cracks beneath the doors.

Wherever the Li's had gone, they hadn't left the heat on. That was dangerous in the coldest parts of winter, as they'd likely return home to frozen and burst pipes.

That is, if they were going to return home at all.

Something told Dalca that wouldn't be the case.

Dalca closed his eyes as they shifted back toward something a little more human, and instead concentrated on feeling the aura of the place. It felt much like the rest of the town, with an overbearing sense of malignant tension. As if the air were filled with darkness rather than humidity, a gloom that clung to the skin as you tried to walk through it.

But despite the aura, Dalca knew there wasn't a breach present there at the house, nor was there an Outsider. If there had been, the nauseating sense of corruption would have been greater. It might have even been enough to drive the neighbors away.

Instead, the mortals all around sat in their warm homes, listening to the early edition news as they settled in for the night.

Dalca began the walk back to his vehicle. Whatever he was looking for, it wasn't there.

* * *

It was over an hour later that he pulled to a stop in front of the Wilson house. Looking at it from the road, Dalca was immediately struck with the difference between it and the other homes he'd seen.

After plugging the addresses into the GPS, Dalca had realized that most of the missing families all lived in the same area of town, save for the Wilsons. Rather than driving back and forth in the growing dark, he'd looked over those at the south end of the small town, and then made his way north.

The other houses had been much like the first. Each was empty and abandoned, with the most recently vacated growing cool while the others were already cold.

It seemed odd to Dalca that whoever or whatever was causing them to disappear was making an effort to turn off the heat. Yet that's what the case seemed to be. The power was still on at each; for those without porch lights burning, Dalca could press his ear to the exterior walls and hear electricity thrumming through them.

For the life of him, Dalca couldn't think of why they'd bothered with turning off the heat.

The other thing he'd noted about several of the houses was an increased sense of corruption. It seemed that those most recently abandoned were clouded in a miasma of suffocating evil. He wondered at why those were so permeated with the stomach-churning aura, while the others were largely spared. Perhaps it was simply due to the fact that whatever was taking the people was growing stronger as it went.

Or perhaps it was something else.

When Dalca reached the Wilson house, he'd seen enough of the small town to immediately be struck with the difference from the others. It too was cold and dark, and a sense of the corruption clung to it like the rest of the town. There wasn't as much as some of the other homes, but it was there.

No. The thing that stood out to his senses was the quality of the home, or lack there of.

The others had all been in a good area of town. Nice, proper homes that were well maintained, with quality cars in private driveways. Multiple vehicles per family seemed out of place in an area that didn't have a lot of places to drive to. That implied that the families either commuted out of town for work, or they simply had enough money to spend on such conveniences.

The Wilson house was on the other end of the spectrum. In a place as small as White River, there weren't 'rough or 'troubled' areas of town. But there was an end of town that was clearly lower in value, with houses made cheaply and maintained even less so.

That's where he found the Wilson house.

It didn't look much bigger than a double-wide, although an addition had been put on at some distant point in the past. At one time, it might have even been considered a good family home.

But Dalca could tell by just looking at it that the place had been left to rot. The roof sagged in one spot beneath the heavy snow, and it was only a matter of time before it gave way. Water stains ran down the siding, and in some places, the vinyl had popped free after cracking in the frozen temperatures.

There was no private driveway there; the beat-up old truck was parked on the front edge of the lawn. It looked like at least one of the tires on the truck had rotted out, and Dalca had to wonder when it had last been used.

He wasn't sure why all of that mattered to him, but it did. Maybe he was determined to find something, even if it wasn't there to find. He only had the one night to investigate before the real feds showed up. Time was running short, and he had nothing to show for his efforts so far.

As he climbed out of the vehicle, Dalca took a look around. The home was on the end of a street that went nowhere. The area was mostly wooded, but there was a neighboring house on one side that wasn't too far. If he didn't find anything in his home inspection this time, he might have to resort to asking questions.

Sighing heavily at the thought, Dalca made his way to the door. The path, assuming there was one, was also covered in snow, and as Dalca walked up the creaky wood steps to the door, his hope had waned.

That is, until his eyes shifted into their reptilian form, and a tendril of citrine warmth greeted him.

Pressing his head to the window, Dalca could just make out the weak sense of ambient heat leaking from somewhere inside. It wasn't much, but it was more than any of the other houses had possessed. And considering that the Wilson house had been one of the first to be abandoned, there was no way it was remnant heat from when the family had been home.

Dalca was just about to pull away from the window when something else struck him. His brow furrowed as he turned his head, pressing his ear to the window.

It was difficult to listen with the cold wind blowing around him, but Dalca focused on the interior of the house. There was movement inside, a brief shuffling that settled quickly. Then there were only the breaths and heartbeats of two occupants huddled somewhere inside.

Dalca strained to hear something more, but there was nothing.

Which changed things entirely.

Dalca stood back from the door, taking one last glance at the trace of heat emanating from somewhere inside. After that, he returned to the Land Rover, where he popped the back hatch. Pulling the long case toward him, Dalca flipped open the latches and lifted the lid, revealing the contents inside.

He already had his black stiletto blade in his inner coat pocket, but he quickly added to his arsenal. The first thing he grabbed was his Luger and its holster. He didn't bother with any spare Luger magazines; if he really was dealing with an Outsider, they wouldn't do much good. The only rounds that might hurt something like that were his exploding rounds, and he made sure to load that magazine into the gun. Using it would be a last resort, though, because while the shots themselves might be silenced by the magics on the barrel, the kinetic explosions would be far from quiet. And Dalca didn't want to get the mortal authorities involved until absolutely necessary.

Rather than wearing it under his jacket, Dalca fastened the holster to one thigh, where he could easily reach it. It was quite obviously _not_ standard Mounty issue, but neither was the dark sword and scabbard he pulled from the case.

Dalca drew the black blade free from its sheath, inspecting as he did. The cusped falchion loosely resembled a scimitar, with a shallow curve to the blade. It surface was mottled and marked like all Damascus steel; unlike modern reproductions, the pattern was rough and asymmetric. Engravings ran the length of the dark metal, and criss-crossed over the short guard and black grip and pommel.

The color of the blade was normally something Dalca took pride in. But as he was supposed to be impersonating a warden, it wouldn't do to be seen with such an easily identifiable weapon. If anyone survived and reported it to the Council, they'd know immediately who had visited the small Canadian town. And that would raise too many questions.

Dalca pressed two fingers to the dark metal and sent power into the weapon as he muttered the spell's command under his breath. " _Pusummu šamātu._ "

The sword seemed to ripple as the spell ran its length. By the time it reached the curving tip, the blade appeared to be a more naturally toned. It still held the slightly darker tone of Damascus steel, but that was to be expected.

Satisfied, Dalca slid the weapon back into its scabbard and attached both to his left hip. With them settled, he touched both hilt and sheath, and issued another command.

" _Pusummu šēssu_ ," he whispered. And as he did, the light around the weapon bent and folded, until nothing remained visible. Should any neighbors see his approach to the house, there would be no concern that the tall man bore a sword.

With his small arsenal in place, Dalca donned the last piece stored in the case: the gray cloak of a White Council Warden.

Dalca could recall the moment he'd accepted it from the White Council Wizard. The irony was not lost on either of them; it was unthinkable that Dalca would wear the symbol of those he had cut down so many times.

But desperate times called for desperate measures. And in recent years, the White Council and its allies had been most desperate indeed.

The fabric had a few standard enchantments worked into it, the type that didn't take much upkeep on Dalca's part. Nothing that useful, but the power of a warden's cloak was not in the enchantments it bore, but the respect it demanded from human practitioners.

Which is what the two huddling inside had to be, for them to have a heat source despite the lack of electricity running through the house.

If they'd had a generator, or even a battery operated heater of some kind, Dalca would have heard their motors running as they provided the warmth needed to survive. Since he had detected neither, and the walls lacked the tell-tale thrum of power, it meant that one or both of the occupants were using magic to generate heat.

Which is why when Dalca returned to kick in the door, it was not as a Mounty, but as a Warden.

As soon as the cheap door popped open beneath his boot, Dalca pressed forward, prepared for the ever-present threshold that would limit his ability to cast magic and use his true strength. Going up against mortal practitioners in such a condition was never advisable. But there were few that Dalca couldn't hold his own against even under worse conditions.

Except, as he passed through the threshold, he found the barrier that greeted him feeble and weak.

Whatever their situation, it seemed that the Wilsons had not made their house a home.

Only a slight tingle rippled across Dalca's skin as he strode forward, advancing toward the heat source he'd detected. As he went, the weak threshold pressed lightly on his temples, making it more difficult to maintain his thermal vision. But it was worth it, as he saw the rose-red forms of the two occupants as they burst out of an interior door and made their way toward the rear of the house.

Dalca caught up with them in a flash. The first was opening the door as his hand fell on the second one's shoulder. He felt the strap of a backpack under his palm, and began to tighten his grip on it and the girl's shirt. "Stop."

To his complete and utter surprise, the girl — from that close he could smell her — spun in his grip, breaking his hold as she thrust a palm at Dalca's chest. What should have been a weak mortal strike was decidedly not as the girl shouted, " _Thosash!_ "

The already too-strong blow to his sternum was made more powerful as a burst of air accompanied it. Dalca felt his cloak twist, and then he was spinning backwards as the spell swirled like a sideways whirlwind.

Dalca crashed into what he assumed was a kitchen counter, but rebounded with inhuman speed. The items he'd dislodged from their places had yet to hit the floor by the time he reached the door, and then he was running after the two retreating forms.

The taller of the two, the same girl that had struck him, glanced back as he closed the distance between them. She looked surprised at his speed, but recovered quickly as she twisted her upper body around. Another palm thrust accompanied a second spell as she barked out, " _Ghosh!_ "

Once again the air swirled, but this time it was no simple wind spell. A sphere of fire burst into existence as she hurled her power back at Dalca. The backyard lit up as a fiery sun shot at him with blinding speed.

But Dalca had faced wizards before; he knew what they were capable of. Which is why his hand had already settled on the hilt of his hidden sword as he cleared the doorway. The newly silver blade leapt from its sheath and sliced through the air to meet the spell.

Dalca saw the girl's eyes widen as the sword split the burning sphere in two.

The enchantments on the weapon cut through the spell, causing it to unravel. The air oscillated as the magic drawn into her attack was released back into the world, her manifested will broken against the greater magics of the blade.

Before she could recover from that shock, Dalca whipped his left hand down and to the side, extending his index and ring fingers. Power roared through his veins like lava, which is how it manifested in the real world as it burst from his fingertips. Hot magma dripped into the cold air, a thin line of molten material running down to trail behind him.

The surface cooled quickly in the frigid temperatures, but beneath the dark igneous shell, the core remained molten as Dalca snapped his hand toward the girl. Bright scarlet fissures appeared in the crust as the thin wire of lava whipped around one of her legs.

The girl stumbled as the line grew taut, and she crashed into the snow. Unprepared for the fall, the girl let the backpack slip from her shoulder, and it tumbled into a snowbank.

Before she was down, Dalca released his hold on the first girl with another flick of his wrist. The air steamed from the heat of the lava line as Dalca swirled it back and around his head before whipping it toward the other girl, the line growing to catch her retreating form.

The first girl had recovered from her fall and had begun rolling over by the time Dalca reached her. With his attention split between the two, he couldn't take chances. He thrust the sword at her exposed throat, the curving point biting up into the soft flesh just to one side of her larynx, even as the whip wrapped around the waist of the other girl.

A startled gasp escaped the first girl's lips as a trickle of blood escaped from the wound. She had the good sense to stop moving, though, so only the very tip of the blade sunk into her flesh.

As a reward for her good behavior, Dalca didn't run her through.

The second girl wasn't fairing much better. With the lava whip coiled around her waist, she'd been wrenched to a halt, but had managed to remain upright. Unlike the first, she seemed to lack good sense; she was burning her hands as she struggled to tear the red-hot line coiled around her. Her voice was a panicked wail as her efforts singed her fingers, but still she ripped at it with a desperate fervor.

"Stop," Dalca ordered as he tugged the whip back. The girl was pulled with it, and her footing finally failed. When she hit the ground, the girl gave up, and thrust her scorched hands into the snow.

Dalca turned his attention to the first girl, who was uncharacteristically bright for a human. Rather than trying another spell to break free, she remained perfectly quiet and still, and therefore remained breathing.

Her eyes drifted to Dalca's left arm as he began pulling the molten whip back toward him. He pulled with raw strength, dragging the other girl across the slick ground as he coiled the loose lava line around his wrist.

He could tell she was impressed, both with his strength and with his ability to not scream out in pain as the scorching line wrapped around him. The sleeve of his jacket sizzled as the line burned through it, but she wasn't close enough to see his skin shift wherever the igneous rock came into contact. The flesh hardened, darkening in color as it became scaly to resist the heat.

Or maybe it wasn't the strength that impressed her. Maybe it was the fact that he could do all that without jostling the sword lodged in her neck.

"Jean Wilson?" Dalca asked as he stared down at the first girl. He let his voice thicken with authority and disapproval. Just the kind of tone a warden would take with a young warlock. Because that's what the girl had to be, to so willingly fling a fireball at another 'mortal'.

She blinked in surprise, and started to nod her head before realizing doing so would cause the blade to sink further into her throat. Speaking would likewise run the sword across her flesh, so she settled for remaining silent.

Dalca didn't need her to confirm her identity. There had been photos of all of the families in the police files, with each member identified in the notes.

Jean was slightly taller and slimmer than Mary Li, who was currently whimpering in a heap as Dalca pulled her across the ground. The Wilson girl was the more attractive of the two, although her face was too pinched and her nose too crooked for her to be considered a true beauty. Sixteen years old, she was nothing more than a twig of a girl, and as she knelt in the snow, her body began to shiver.

That wasn't going to end well, what with the sword at her throat.

"If you agree to behave, I will remove the sword," Dalca told her. "Blink thrice if you agree." He threw the 'thrice' in there for affect; all those wizarding types loved old-speech.

The girl quickly fluttered her eyes in acquiescence. Dalca pulled the sword back from her throat, but left it hovering a few inches in front of her. His arm didn't waver, and the girl took note of that as she slowly reached for her bleeding neck.

The whimpering girl was finally pulled even with the first, and Dalca caught the scolding look Jean shot at her as she dabbed at her wound.

For her part, Mary didn't notice. Her eyes were clenched shut behind her fists, and her body was coiled up as tightly as she could manage with the scalding whip still around her waist.

Dalca let the power he'd been channeling go, and the whip broke into pieces as it fell to the turf. The heat of it was still enough to melt the snow as it crumbled, but after only a few moments, that too had faded as the manifested magma turned into nothing more than a wispy tendril of smoke.

He took a moment to look over the second girl. Mary was what humans sometimes called pleasantly plump. Despite having assets in the right places, Mary Li would never be a looker. But as livestock went, Dalca figured she was edible enough.

Dalca turned his attention back to Jean, who seemed more composed than she had any right to be. "You know what I am?" Dalca asked knowingly. "You know where I come from?"

The girl nodded slowly, her eyes never leaving the sword. "Y-you're from the Council. A w-warden." Her words trembled from the cold rather than fear.

"If you know that much, you should have known better than to mess with dark magics."

"I-I didn't!" Jean protested quickly, a quick anger piercing the chattering of her teeth. "I mean I d-don't! I've never met anyone from the Council; I'd just read about it online!"

"Online?" Dalca asked, forcing a quizzical look to his face. He knew perfectly well what she was talking about, but a wizard wouldn't. One thing mortal magic wasn't good for was cohabitation with technology. As such, they weren't all that up-to-date on recent technological breakthroughs like the internet and water heaters.

"There are things online!" she added quickly. "We read about it, but we never met anyone! We didn't know!"

Before Dalca could respond, a sound from the neighboring house drew their attention. Taking a quick step forward, he reactivated the invisibility spell laid into the sword, and the blade disappeared in a shimmer of light as he rested it against Jean's shoulder.

Understanding, the girl remained quiet as a man took the trash out. He was quick to deposit the bag in the lidded can, and then made his way back to the door.

Dalca cursed himself for letting Mara stay in the motel. The water vâlvă might not like the cold weather, but she could still work her magic in it. Just as she'd severely increased the humidity around the cell towers in Copenhagen to dampen their signal, so too could she work up a good gust of snow and freezing rain to shield their presence from the man, as well as dampen the sound of Mary's whimpers.

Fortunately it proved unnecessary. The neighbor had his head hunched down to ward off the cold, and didn't give the Wilsons' yard a second thought. He didn't see the three of them a mere thirty yards away, nor did he hear the second girl's shallow whimpering. The door closed behind him with a resounding thud, and Dalca's eyes turned back to the girls.

Jean started to speak, but Dalca motioned for her to stop. He listened for sounds coming from the house, and could make out a television coming on. It didn't seem as if the man had made for a phone, but Dalca couldn't be sure.

With a grim determination to get things moving before someone noticed their situation, Dalca's attention shifted back to the composed girl. At least the other's whimpers had finally faded, although she seemed intent on remaining curled in a fetal position.

"P-please," Jean whispered as her teeth chattered. She might have flinched as the sword re-appeared at her neck, or maybe her chills were growing worse. "Please, I can explain. It's not our fault."

The pleading tone was well practiced, but far from genuine. A mortal might have believed her, but Dalca knew better. The emotion wasn't in her heart. The girl was deflecting with doe-eyed desperation, and would take whatever advantage she could get in their situation.

Dalca acted as if he were considering her words, even though he'd already decided her fate. He needed her alive long enough to explain what was happening, and not a moment longer. But wizards never let on just how ignorant or hopeless they were in a given situation, so neither could he.

"Very well," he relented, withdrawing the sword. "I will withhold judgment for now. But should—"

His words cut short as the wind shifted, bringing with it a nauseating new scent. Dalca's eyes shot toward the distant tree-line behind the yard, and the long shadows there that hid something dangerous.

The presence was ripe with malfeasance and decay, a miasma of death and darkness that registered on more than just the physical senses. Still, those are what he had to work with as he studied the night.

There was no heartbeat that he could detect, but it might be too far to hear in the wind. Dalca had allowed his eyes to shift back into their human appearance as he'd finished wrangling the girls, but he now blinked them back into their more reptilian form as he scanned the shadows.

The darkness took on different hues as he searched for signs of heat that would identify the threat. The girls were small beacons of scarlet warmth before him, but there was no other source of fiery illumination that might indicate some living thing in the night.

Of course, that didn't narrow things down as much as one would hope.

As he stared between the trees, a slight increase in thermal shades finally alerted him to the source of the odor he'd detected. The form was much too dark to have hot blood pumping through it veins; its mild warmth simmered in a lower shade of emerald.

The form was hunched, and stalked forward at a slow pace. But despite the distance between them steadily decreasing, Dalca saw no increase in temperature, nor heard any heartbeat accompanying the thing.

"Get up," Dalca snapped at the girls.

The Wilson girl seemed startled by the shift in his attention. But whatever she might have been thinking, she obeyed, and turned to look where Dalca's eyes were trained.

"Shit," she whispered, her gaze staring into the shadows. "They found us."

"So it would seem," Dalca said as the weak thermal signature reached the tree line, where it hesitated.

Whatever it was, it was aware of their presence. Dalca blinked away his thermal vision, and the world shifted into a more mundane portion of the electromagnetic spectrum. He could just make out the shadow of the form, although it was hard to tell what it might be. The revolting nature of its aura seemed to quickly permeate the yard, swirling around them and imbuing their senses with its filth.

A low, guttural snort echoed through the night as the thing finally stepped forward. Two paces out of the trees, Dalca got his first good look at it.

That didn't mean that he could readily identify it, though.

It looked like a chimera of some sort. He'd seen plenty in his day, ranging the more traditional griffins and lamassu that occurred naturally in the supernatural world, to the bastard hybrids like the grunches and peuchens that others bred as weapons.

But none of them looked anything like this.

The thing had the head and body of a wild boar, although every last trace of hair was gone, leaving its sallow and rotting skin bare. Grotesque lumps had formed all across its form, making it almost unrecognizable beneath its countless tumors. Open wounds festered on its side, where skin had sloughed away to reveal putrid flesh and bone. One eye looked to have been savaged by carrion birds, and even at the distance, Dalca thought he could make out the squirming movement of maggots in the cavity.

Its decayed state wasn't what made it a horror, though. Seeing such a thing standing as if alive, and hearing its wet and undulating breath, was certainly enough to give anyone nightmares. But undead things are a dime a dozen. Watching its puss-filled sores pop and dribble as it shifted its weight was nauseating, but not unduly so.

No, the true horror lay in the fact that the suid head and torso stood upright on legs that were all-too-human.

Dalca knew at a glance that this was no hybrid being like a true chimera or therioceph. Those evolved through magical means. Those involved genetic manipulations and magical metamorphosis to create something new.

This thing was born of neither. It was as if someone had taken human legs and grafted them onto a boar. More cancerous lumps joined the disparate flesh together, the masses on its hips causing its gate to be awkward and unsteady. The legs were just as deformed, just as putrid as the rest of it.

The blasphemy against the natural order didn't end there. Dalca could see that one arm was also human, while the other looked to be ursine. All of it was hairless, leaving the different shades of flesh starkly exposed and easily identifiable. Only the gangrene rot was uniform across each segment that had been joined together.

Dalca stared at the unnatural beast with unequivocal disgust. He might be a monster, but he was at least a monster of the natural world. This thing was… unnatural. Unworldly.

It was, plainly put, _wrong_.

And then its head tilted back, exposing a human throat that had been grafted onto the swine's neck. The Adam's apple slowly began to bob up and down, its breath growing haggard as it began to speak.

" _Jean_ _…_ " it snorted with a thick wet speech. " _Come back_ _…_ "

"Fuck you," the girl replied, her words defiant despite a streak of terror running through them. Dalca spared a glance her way, and found the girl squared off against the thing. He could sense the power she'd summoned, as well as feel the heat radiating from the palm she held aloft.

It was only the warming spell she'd used to keep the girls alive in the frigid house, but Dalca suspected it could quickly be turned into another burning sphere of flame.

The xenograft made a gargling snort that must have been its revolting version of laughter. " _Come back, and we will be_ together."

Considering what she was looking at, and the way it said 'together', the girl couldn't help but shudder in revulsion. Its words brought images to Dalca's mind as well, and not pleasant ones. Death and blood did not disgust him; they were simply a part of life, after all.

This… _thing_ , was not.

"Name yourself, creature," he ordered, holding the sword aloft. It sounded just pompous enough to be wizard-like.

But while the ruse might have worked on the unsuspecting girl, it failed on the monster, which recognized its own. The xenograft's good eye shifted toward him, and the snout sniffed at the air. " _You are different. You are not like_ them." Its head lowered again as it took another shambling step forward. " _I will try on your flesh next._ "

"I think not," Dalca replied, even as he began to channel power into his blade. The flakes of snow that had come to rest upon its upturned side sizzled in the sudden heat that coursed through the weapon. "You will be banished from this place."

The xenograft gave another snorting laugh, its human and suid throat segments undulating together in mirth. The sound of it made the girl gag, and its eye trained on her. " _Come, Jean. Come back to me. I will give you the power you seek_."

In response, the girl unleashed the spell she'd prepared. A swirling ball of fire shot forward as she thrust her palm out, just as she'd done before. It roared as it smacked into the thing's body, setting its makeshift form ablaze. The creature rocked backward under the force of the blow and collapsed to the ground. But despite the cold and the snow, the girl's fire was not extinguished.

The stench of burning flesh drifted over the wind as the chimera kept on laughing through the inferno that threatened to engulf it. The smell was revolting, as boar and human and bear all sizzled and popped like meat on a spit. It was overpowering, and almost completely masked the scent of the rotting cougar creeping up behind them.

Dalca blinked his eyes back into their reptilian form and quickly turned about, searching for more heat sources. Although they were just as faint as the first xenograft had been, he found them easily enough. Once he knew they were there, he understood how the yard had become so saturated in the repugnant aura.

He had just enough time to curse himself a fool as the other beasts he had not sensed burst from cover all around them, even as the first laughed its gleeful gagging laughter into the night.


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter 5

Dalca spun, his sword cutting through the air to meet the second chimera that had slunk up while the first had kept them distracted. The superheated blade made an ear-piercing shriek as it whipped through the ice-cold air to take the cougar-like chimera in the chest as it leapt.

The tip drove into its heart, but that didn't seem to make a difference to the beast impaled upon the weapon. The thing kept thrashing as the hot blade sank into its flesh, allowing its snapping jaws to inch closer to Dalca.

Taking a second to observe the thing, Dalca noted that it had been modified just as the first had. It too was in an advanced state of decay, but it had largely retained its original feline form. Rather than replacing pieces like the first chimera, something had made additions.

Its tail had been replaced with the body of a snake, the wedge-shaped head of which coiled over the beast's back. Both it and the larger maw snapped at Dalca as the thing tried to close the distance between them. As the cougar's mouth gnashed open and closed, Dalca spotted a second jaw with human teeth set behind the first.

If that weren't enough, human arms jutted from its sides, just below its natural forelegs. The arms were mismatched, one thick with muscle while the other was thin and weak. The hands of each grasped for the hot blade, and the smell of burning human flesh became overpowering as it tried to wrench itself free of the sword.

With inhuman strength, Dalca tore the weapon to one side, letting the heated blade cut through the chest of the beast. If it felt any pain, it didn't let it show. Instead, the beast began to teeter forward, its feline head twisting to one side as if to grab at Dalca's neck while its nails raked forward.

Dalca swiped again with the blade, and felt a satisfying thunk as it bit back into the xenograft's flesh. Bone, muscle and skin sizzled as the weapon lopped the head from the creature, sending it tumbling into the snow.

Turning quickly to see what else he had to contend with, Dalca neglected to realize that, while the head had fallen, the body had not. A hard swiping pressure on one side drew his attention back to the headless feline body still standing upright. The beast had lashed one clawed paw at him, and only the instinctive transformation of his skin had prevented him from being sliced to ribbons.

Headless but still fighting, the chimera reared up on its hind legs, allowing it to grab and slash with its other four limbs.

Dalca moved like lightning, taking a quick step back. As he shifted away, he brought one boot up to strike the thing in the chest, which sent it flying backward several feet. The beast landed in the deep snow, but began thrashing as soon as it did, looking to rise again.

Another fiery roar drew Dalca's attention back around, and he quickly spotted another blazing chimera as it fell into the snow near Jean. She was still standing, although it looked like she might have exhausted what power she'd had left when she set a hairless bear-wolf chimera aflame. Her shoulders were sagging from the effort, and there was no way she could prepare another spell by the time the eagle-snake beast would reach Mary, who was still curled upon the ground.

He might have been tempted to let the girl die, but he needed answers first. Frustrated, Dalca thrust his left hand forward, his fingers hooked like claws as he shouted, "Down!"

Jean obeyed automatically, and her head was barely out of the way when Dalca unleashed his spell. "Şalmu birqu!"

Black lightning shot forward, twisting and coiling its way through the air toward the flying beast. An ultrascarlet nimbus encompassed the unnaturally hued lightning, casting odd shadows across the yard as it struck at its target.

But unlike lightning, Dalca's spell did not just singe. The red-hued nimbus would burn at a touch, but the dark core of the lightning was a spell of unraveling; a spell that would unmake anything it struck.

When it hit the flying chimera, the dark power flickered across its form. Every piece of flesh exposed to the power was broken down in an instant. The chemical bonds that bound it together shattered, leaving the rest to fly apart, burned and pulped. In less than a second, what had once been a living thing was reverted to nothing more than a bloody mist of particles and gore.

There was no time for him to appreciate the complete destruction of the monster, because the other dozen xenografts were still coming.

Some were no bigger than beavers or foxes, while some were formed from wolves and deer. The largest was the size of a moose, which it was, save for the bear's muzzle that had been grafted onto its face. Each was unique, and yet all bore the same traits as the first xenograft. No hair was to be found upon any of them, and the rotting masses on their forms made them even more alien.

Dalca dropped his black stiletto knife at Jean's feet as he swung his sword through a moose-bear's head. The blade sheered through it with ease, but he rounded the swing to take out its forelegs as well. As it toppled to the snow-covered turf, he swiped the blade again to take off the still-kicking hind legs even as he unleashed another bolt of black lightning at a wolf-porcupine hybrid.

The beast collapsed to the ground, reduced to its base elements. The thin girl was quick to stab at a leg that had remained hole enough to twitch its way across the slushy turf.

Not bothering with his Luger, Dalca kept at the beasts with his sword and black lightning. The explosive rounds might destroy the things, but Dalca didn't want both hands full with so many creatures closing on him. His lightning was the most effective weapon he had, even if it was the most costly when it came to power.

Once or twice he managed to sever head and limb using a tight beam of fire that he shot from outstretched fingers, and a hastily formed lava line wrenched a xenograft just short of Mary. Power pulsed down the line before he released the spell, the molten rock burning hot enough to sheer through the unnatural beast's flesh before crumbling into the snow.

For a few perilous minutes, Dalca burned and disintegrated anything that came at him, making sure no form remained whole.

Both were things he was very good at, but fueling those spells wasn't cheap. He was naturally inclined to fire and flame, but the unraveling spell required him to tap his reserves. It was something Dalca and his kind reserved for desperate situations. But with undead xenografts of an Outsider demon threatening to kill the only leads he had, Dalca was short of options.

Finally, after much too long, and with entirely too much power spent, the last of the unnatural chimeras fell, leaving the yard still and silent. Dalca looked about, careful to make sure he hadn't missed anything. He and the girls were surrounded by death, and the churned snow ran red with carnage. But no further threats presented themselves.

An unnerving, guttural laugh echoed in the distance as what remained of the first chimera retreated into the shadows.

Dalca glanced down at the girls. Jean remained crouched at the ready, the black bladed stiletto held aloft. She'd recovered the discarded backpack at some point, and held it tight to her chest. Mary hadn't moved, and was little more than a blubbering mess of incoherent wailing.

He released the heat spell from his sword, and thrust the tip into the ground. The snow around it melted in an instant, and he left the blade to cool as he looked down at Mary. "Get up." It had taken everything he had not to sink the blade into the gut of the weeping girl.

At the threatening tone to his words, Mary flinched back from him. Jean had the sense to obey, and rose with the stiletto in hand. That she kept it between her and Dalca was another point in her favor.

"I said, get up," he repeated to Mary. His patience was gone, and he was sorely tempted to simply run her through. But he needed information, and he doubted the other one would cooperate if he killed her friend.

Only, Jean surprised him by reaching for the prone girl and wrenching her up by her collar. "Get up, bitch," she hissed, no tenderness in her words to soften the insult.

Dalca stepped back as the lean girl dragged the plump one to her feet. When Mary tried to cling to her for support, Jean smacked her across the face. It was hard and violent, especially given that the waif of a girl seemed to have a greater-than-average strength.

Mary staggered, but the blow finally cut through her morose demeanor. "Fuck, stop!" she blabbered as Jean threatened to grab her again when Mary had almost gone down.

"Enough," Dalca said to the worthwhile one. "We need to hurry."

As he spoke, Dalca bent to grab one large chunk of xenograft flesh. He tossed it atop another, and then more followed.

"What are you doing?" Jean asked with a frown as Dalca began gathering up everything that remained of the chimeras. What he could find was tossed in a heap around the sword, where the ground had been thawed by the heat of the blade. Nothing moved on its own as he worked; whatever power had been animating the pieces had fled with the first chimera.

"We can't leave any trace of this thing you've conjured up," Dalca replied.

She started to deny it, but a dark look warned her not to say anything.

Instead, she shrugged the bag onto her back and reached for a piece of a chimera that had fallen nearby. Tentatively grasping the deformed flesh, the girl grimaced and tossed it in the pile. Dalca left the smaller pieces to her, and concentrated on dragging the larger carcasses of the moose and deer into place.

Mary did nothing, save for move further away when the pile grew too close for comfort.

It took them a while to gather everything; longer than he would have preferred. There were lots of bits and pieces strewn about. The black lightning spell had done wonders against the creatures, but it wasn't exactly tidy. When they were almost finished, he went to retrieve the last of the large corpses.

When he returned, Mary finally caught sight of it. Her hands flew to her mouth, and then she was on her knees, retching into the snow. Jean looked shaken, but was once again surprisingly calm.

"God," she whispered as she watched Dalca throw her neighbor's body onto the pile.

"He came back out during the fight," Dalca explained. "Must have heard us. The wolf-porcupine thing got him on its way in."

Said thing had ripped his throat out before proceeding toward Dalca and the girls. And while the man hadn't been possessed by the thing controlling the xenografts, Dalca wasn't going to chance it. Not when the Outsider could clearly use flesh as a weapon.

Another waste. Had he lived, Dalca might have made a meal out of the neighbor. But he was dead and gone by the time the fight was over, and there was nothing left for him to consume. Only blood alone, which held no temptation for him.

It was the power of the living spirit coursing through their veins that he desired.

"I-Is Mr. Morris really d-dead?" Mary whimpered, only looking at the body from out of the corner of her eye, as if looking at it head on would make it too real.

"Save your tears. They do not serve him," Dalca said bluntly. "He is beyond all of this."

"How can you say that?!" the girl snapped, her grief finding an outlet through rage.

"It's true," Dalca replied, without care or malice. "The thing that's left is nothing more than a husk. What he was is gone, and well beyond our reach. Beyond the reach of the thing that did this," he added, gesturing toward the pile.

Mary wiped a wet cuff at her nose, but left her fresh tears on her face. "But he's dead," she spat.

"If you want to blame someone for that, blame yourself," Dalca replied as he gestured toward the sword. As he did, the silver blade burst into white-hot flame, which quickly spread to the piled flesh. A bonfire shot up that quickly evaporated the frozen water around it. The snowdrifts retreated back from the heat as every last trace of the unnatural things went up in smoke.

With the fire still raging, Dalca reached into the flames to retrieve his sword. While the blade was still hot, the hilt was cool to the touch. He deactivated the spell that had heated the weapon, and then sank it into another snow drift to help it cool.

As it did, Dalca took inventory. His jacket had been burned and cut where he'd used the lava line spell, and more had been shredded as some of the beasts had torn into his clothes. There were rends in his pants as well, but the warden's cloak had held up well. Still, he'd need to freshen up. If a cop or civilian saw him like that, there'd be questions. Questions that would cost them their lives.

And while that wouldn't normally deter him, Dalca was short on time. The earliest hours of the night were already gone, and he hadn't made much progress. Thankfully the winter night was one of the longest of the year, and there were still hours yet before the feds arrived.

When the blade was finally cool enough, Dalca returned it to its scabbard. He motioned for Jean to give him the stiletto. When she did, he saw the ichor coating the smaller black blade, and quickly triggered another heating spell into that weapon as well. What remained of the creatures burned and flaked away as Dalca started toward the house.

"Where are you going?" Jean asked as she began to follow.

Dalca looked back at her, and then to Mary, who was still close to the bonfire. For someone so squeamish, she seemed willing enough to stand the stench of burning flesh for the heat it provided. "Bring her."

Jean surprised him again by rolling her eyes before turning back around. "Mary, get over here."

"Why?" the plump girl replied as she turned to the thin one. "He's just going to kill us."

Dalca stopped at the threshold of the house. "I don't kill indiscriminately," he said truthfully. "But if you don't come with me, I'll judge you here and now."

Both girls saw one hand drop to his sword hilt.

Both girls followed him into the house.

"Get anything you need," Dalca said as he tucked the stiletto away. "Move quickly. We need to leave in two minutes."

Jean started to reply, but another dark look got her moving. Mary trailed after her, as if afraid to be left alone with the mean warden.

If she only knew.

While they retrieved some things, Dalca strolled through the home, feeling the slight pressure of its threshold. He eyed the small inner washroom where the girls had holed up, and noted the discarded food wrappers from several days worth of consumption. There was a stench to the enclosed space, one he didn't care to linger on. As he moved on, Mary retrieved a bag from the space.

Despite their protests, the girls knew what was happening. Or at least some of it. Which was why they'd hidden themselves away in a dark corner of a cold house, living on scraps and magically provided heat for days.

He moved to a central wall as the girls finished retrieving what they could. One finger grew and shifted as a dark claw shone with power. Dalca ran the glowing fingernail across the cheap wallpaper, which sizzled and burned beneath his touch. He quickly traced out a pattern, pouring energy into it as the spell blackened the drywall. Crimson light shifted in the dark soot as he added more and more power to it.

When it was complete, he took a step back to inspect his work. The sigil shone brightly for one last second before fading, until it looked as if someone had simply taken a large brand to the wall. The only indication that there was anything unnatural to it was the slight flaking of ash that slowly fell along the perimeter at a steady pace.

Jean eventually came out with one duffel over her shoulder and her school bag on her back. She frowned when she saw the spell, clearly wanting to know what it was. Impatient, Dalca motioned her out, and Mary followed on her heals, dragging several bags behind her. It was almost comical, as if she was going on vacation and carrying everything she could possibly need.

As if any of her things could help her survive what she'd brought down upon herself.

The three made their way to the rental, where Dalca tossed the sword into the back and started up the engine.

Mary ended up in the rear, keeping as far away from Dalca as she could. Jean settled silently into the passenger seat, and cast a hesitant look at him as he pulled away from the house. He ignored it, and kept his eyes elsewhere as he watched for any potential witnesses that might see their departure.

The spell on the wall continued to shed dark embers long after they'd disappeared into the night.


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter 6

Dalca held the motel room door open as the girls passed through. He locked it after them, and then started toward the back. He deposited the keys and stiletto on the dresser, and put the Luger and sword on the second bed.

"Stay here," he ordered the girls. The two obeyed, with one looking over the room while the other trembled, watching him out of the corner of her eye.

He could tell that Mary wanted to flee; to make a run for it while his back was turned. Her eyes had flickered to the keys as he'd discarded them. She could take them and go. Get out of the God-forsaken town and escape the thing that wanted her. Escape the judgment she had to expect of the man she thought was a warden.

Jean wanted to run as well. That much was clear. But she appeared to understand that she wouldn't survive on her own.

The other girl was simply too afraid to do it.

Dalca left them alone, to see what they might do, and what he might learn.

When he pushed open the bathroom door, he was greeted with the sound of joyous splashing.

Mara looked up from the sink as he entered, and immediately noted his mood. "Things went badly?" she asked from the steaming hot pool she'd made for herself. Fresh water trickled into the sink at the same pace that it escaped out the overflow drain. The water vâlvă floated on the surface, her limbs and tail spread out in relaxation.

"Not terribly," Dalca replied. "One casualty. Did I get any calls?"

"No," Mara replied.

Dalca nodded. No news from Tremblay, then. "I've got two warlocks out here I need to interrogate."

Mara's eyes shifted to the warden's cloak Dalca still wore. "You want me to help?" she asked, with what might have been a little too much excitement.

"No. I need you to keep a lookout," he countered. "I think we got away clean, but the thing we're dealing with might have had eyes on us." Dalca hadn't seen anything following them, but the nauseating aura had lingered in their wake. For all he knew, some winged chimera had already reported their location.

Mara gave a soft sigh before doing a back-flip out of the water. She was dry in an instant as she absorbed every last drop of water upon her slight form. As she donned her custom clothing, she shot Dalca a look. "Can I at least stay inside where it's warm?"

"You can sit in the car," he offered. "But make sure you stay alert. This thing almost got the drop on me with a dozen undead xenografts."

One of Mara's dark eyebrows twitched up at that, but she nodded. "Short honk for mortals. Long honk for anything else."

Dalca nodded in understanding, and the water vâlvă disappeared. Alone, he hung the warden's cloak on the back of the door and started up the shower. While he let it steam up the room, he discarded the rest of his clothes, leaving everything in a heap in one corner.

While he quickly bathed, he listened, to hear what might be said in his absence.

" _We can go!_ " Mary whispered urgently. " _We can take the car and leave!_ "

" _Shut the fuck up_ ," Jean replied. There was an undisguised contempt in her voice. " _You wouldn_ _'_ _t last five seconds out there_."

" _But we could go_ together," the other girl insisted. " _Look out for each other_."

" _Why the fuck would I do that?_ " Jean scoffed. " _We_ _'_ _re not friends. We're not 'sisters'. I never would have bothered with you if it hadn't been for the book_."

It was Mary's turn to scoff. " _Bothered with_ me? _Like any of us would have given_ you _the time of day!_ "

" _And yet you all came to_ me _for help_ ," Jean replied.

" _Stan just wanted to include you because you_ _'_ _re into this shit,"_ Mary shot back. _"_ _Don't think that means any of us actually_ like _you._ _"_

" _Thank God for that_ ," Jean muttered, and Dalca could all but hear her roll her eyes as she did. " _Look, if you want to go, go_."

" _I will_ ," Mary replied. Dalca heard the tinkle of car keys.

" _Do me a favor, though?_ " Jean asked.

" _What?_ " Mary said, seeming surprised by the request.

" _When you die, will you come back as a ghost to tell me which one caught up with you?_ "

" _Which one what?_ " Mary asked, startled.

" _You know_ ," Jean whispered conspiratorially. " _The monsters or the warden. Which one kills you_."

There was a pregnant pause. " _He_ _'_ _s not going to come after me_."

" _Riiight_ ," Jean replied. " _Because the one thing we read about the wardens online was how relaxed they are with people that break the Laws_."

" _But we didn_ _'_ _t break the laws!_ " Mary insisted. " _We didn_ _'_ _t kill anyone, we didn't coerce anyone, we didn't twist anyone's mind—_ "

" _Not at first. But what about Ol_ _'_ _Frank?_ " Jean countered. " _You told me about him_."

" _We didn_ _'_ _t_ do _anything_ ," Mary insisted. " _At least I didn_ _'_ _t. That was the boys_."

" _Fuck off!_ " Jean replied. " _You used him in the ritual, after I_ told _you not to_."

" _That was_ Stan!" Mary countered. " _You know how he got. And besides, I came to you after that. I can_ _'_ _t be blamed for the rest of this_."

" _The rest of this?!_ " Jean hissed. " _You mean them taking your parents? My dad? All of the others?_ "

" _Stop!_ _ **Stop!**_ " Mary pleaded. " _I-I had nothing to do with that_."

" _You_ _'_ _re just going to take off, without knowing what happened to them?_ "

" _No, that_ _'_ _s— they're—_ " Mary tried, her breath growing rapid as panic set in. " _They_ _'_ _re fine. Maybe if we just gave the book back, they'll let the others go_."

Jean laughed at that. " _Your dad has that tattoo on his left arm, right? The military one? With the wings?_ "

An image flashed into Dalca's mind, of a well-muscled arm with a winged tattoo. He'd seen that very arm.

Attached to the first xenograft.

" _Yeah_ ," Mary said, sounding unsure.

" _Yeah, I_ _'_ _m sure they'll give him back_ ," Jean said. Lower, she muttered, " _Probably sent you a few pieces already_."

" _Whatever,_ " Mary said, not hearing her. " _Give me the book and I_ _'_ _ll handle it_."

" _Like hell,_ " Jean spat.

" _Fine_ ," Mary growled. " _Then good luck with the warden. And when you_ _'_ _re a ghost, tell me how sticking around worked out_."

Dalca heard the tinkle of keys again, and knew that Mary had talked up enough courage to go. Which he couldn't allow.

Closing his eyes, Dalca pictured the doorknob. It was clear in his mind, although his connection with it was tenuous at best.

But the markings he'd scratched into the cheap metal with one clawed finger while holding the door open for the girls helped.

As soon as he felt the bond form between the doorknob and him, Dalca poured magic into the connection. He poured heat into it, just enough to turn the metal into a scalding surface.

" _Ow!_ " Mary yelped, and Dalca could hear her waving her hand as if to cool it.

" _Heh,_ " Jean laughed weakly. " _Heh heh_."

" _How did he do that?_ " Mary whimpered.

" _Because he_ _'_ _s a warden of the fucking White Council, you Stupid. Fucking. Bitch_." The scorn in Jean's voice had gone up to new levels. " _You really have no fucking clue what_ _'_ _s out there, and what it'd do to you if you_ did _manage to get away, do you?_ "

" _It_ _'_ _s just the guys fucking with us_ ," Mary insisted lamely.

" _Whatever,_ " Jean said, the word dripping with scorn. " _Just go. Maybe you_ _'_ _ll lure them away. Make it easier for us_."

" _US?_ " Mary scoffed. " _He_ _'_ _s just as liable to kill you as he is me._ "

" _He probably will_ ," Jean said, and there was something almost depressingly resolved to it. " _But he will_ definitely _kill you if you run_." Dalca heard a creak, and realized Jean was leaning forward in a chair. " _So, by all means_ ," she said with a smile to her words. " _Run_."

" _Fuck you, bitch!_ " Mary hissed. Dalca heard the grinding of metal, and knew instantly what Mary was doing.

Dalca had made no bond with the rental car keys, so he had no easy way of connecting to them like he had with the door handle. Still, he'd held them, he'd possessed them, he knew what they felt like, and where they were.

It was enough.

" _Ow, FUCK!_ " Mary yelled as the keys grew red-hot from where she clenched them in-between her fingers like a weapon.

Dalca heard the keys hit the floor, and then Mary was dancing on her feet as she whimpered.

" _Oh, fuck_ ," Jean repeated softly. Dalca heard her rise from the chair. After a moment, she continued, " _He can hear us._ "

" _What?_ " Mary said through the pain as Dalca cut off the water.

" _Fuck fuck fuck_ ," Jean said quickly as he climbed out of the shower. He didn't bother with a towel. Instead, he walked out of the bathroom soaking wet and naked, where he found Jean standing by the front window, and Mary hunched over a few paces away.

"Stay back from the window," he warned Jean as he retrieved his suitcase from the corner. "They might be out there. Don't make a target of yourself."

Jean stepped away, her pale face blushing scarlet at the sight of his nudity. He could feel her eyes on him, noting the water that evaporated from his skin as he increased his body temperature.

"Freshen up and get changed," he told Mary as he pulled an air-compressed storage bag from the suitcase and popped the seal. There was a slight hiss as it expanded, and then he pulled out a complete set of clothing. "Leave everything you're wearing in the bathroom."

Mary didn't linger. Cradling her hands, she took up one of her bags and hastily made her way past him. Jean remained where she was, as if awaiting instructions from the man that held her life in his hands. She was clearly on edge after guessing he'd heard them talking, but was doing her best to look nonplussed.

"Nice tat," she said as she eyed the dark pattern that spanned the left side of his chest and most of his left arm. When he failed to respond, she pressed further. "What are those supposed to be? Dragon scales?"

Dalca paused for a moment as he pulled his underwear on, his eyes drifting to the girl. "What makes you say that?"

"I don't know," she replied as her blush deepened. "They just… look like scales of some sort. They're not snake scales, though… so…" she trailed off, clearly embarrasses.

Dalca glanced at the hundreds of black marks on his skin. They most assuredly looked like small scales that interlocked from his chest down to his wrist. All but three were identical in shape, size, and color. The unique trio stood out starkly midst the sea of black on his bicep. Two were a dark gray, while the third was a white so bright that it almost seemed to shine.

"They're trophies," Dalca replied as he resumed getting dressed. "One for each kill."

"Kill?" the girl repeated, her voice dropping as her heart-rate spiked.

"Significant kill," he corrected himself.

Jean considered his words before replying. "So, you'll what, add some more for those things that were after us?"

Dalca was almost offended by that. "I said significant kills. That was just taking out the trash."

"Oh. Right," the girl said with a careless shrug. "Yeah, they weren't so tough."

"No, they weren't," Dalca agreed, smiling despite himself. "If I added another mark for every two-bit monster and fledging warlock I've killed, I would have run out of space long ago."

That caused the girl's heart-rate to soar again, but she did a good job of concealing her fear. If he hadn't been able to hear the flutter in her chest, nor smell the nervous sweat that had broken out across her scalp, he might not have noticed.

"Are you going to kill us?" she asked somewhat calmly, as if the answer weren't imperative to her continued existence.

Rather than responding, Dalca finished getting dressed. By the time he was done, Jean was practically quaking with fear. She'd seemed resolved enough to her fate when talking with Mary, but now that she faced her would-be executioner, she wasn't nearly so accepting.

"Tell me about the book," he finally said, settling into another chair across from her. His gaze was intense but not threatening. "Don't lie. I'll know if you do."

Which was usually true. When he concentrated on listening, he could sometimes pick up on the subtle fluctuations that accompanied lies. But despite her attempt at looking confident and defiant, the girl's pulse was fast and thready. In her condition, he doubted he'd pick up on much if she did lie.

Still, she seemed to believe him, as she stumbled her way through the tale.

"It all began with Stan," she began, her dark eyes nervous as she fiddled with her hands. "He's a boy in our class. Some guy from one of the trains — I don't know who, I never saw him — gave him a book."

"Where is the book now?" Dalca asked.

"Here," Jean said, reaching for her backpack. The same one she'd had with her when he'd first seen her, and had kept close ever since. She unzipped the larger compartment, and pulled out a moderately sized leather-bound book.

At his prodding, she passed the book to Dalca, who looked it over as she continued. "Stan showed his friends, and told them what the guy said. That it was a book of spells, one that would give them incredible abilities and powers if they used it right."

As she spoke, Dalca flipped through the pages. It seemed to be your typical magical grimoire, with each page dedicated to a different spell. Some were big enough to require two pages, and the last one in the book took up four.

Rather than using only his physical senses, Dalca reached out to the book to get a feel for it. When he did, he was surprised by the lack of darkness. There were traces of it, but it was weak and thready. It seemed almost as if the book contained two different auras.

"How did they translate this?" Dalca asked as he gazed at the spell on one page. Most of it was in Latin, although some looked to be in a language Dalca had never seen. Which was rare, considering just how many languages he'd seen.

"They couldn't," Jean admitted, allowing a bit of pride to creep into her voice. "They played around with it for a couple weeks before they brought it to me."

Dalca looked up at her, working to maintain a passive expression. "Why you?"

Jean shrugged as she leaned back, unconsciously rubbing her arms. "I've dabbled with what I could find online. That got me a reputation at school."

Taking a moment to re-appraise her, Dalca realized what he'd failed to notice at first. The raven-black hair wasn't natural to the girl, although her eyes seemed almost as dark. Her skin was pale, which was fairly normal for a white kid in Canada in mid-winter. But there was a sallow coloring to her skin that spoke of very little time outdoors even when the weather was more amicable.

There was the remnants of black nail polish on her fingernails, no doubt chipped away during her time on the run. The boots she wore weren't just winter wear; they were black, and would have had steel toes or studs if such things weren't surprisingly dangerous in the cold Canadian winter months.

Her clothing was unremarkable, save for the dark tones. She wore a black hooded sweatshirt that zipped up the front, and her jeans were similar in hue. The color contrasted with the pale, gaunt appearance of her slim hands, long fingers, and delicate neck.

"What are they called?" Dalca mused. "Gothic children?"

Jean scowled at that. "I'm not goth."

"A loaner," Dalca said as he eyed her critically. "Unpopular with her classmates, tends to be alone, except for a couple close friends. Has a reputation for being weird, and reading weird books and doing weird things. Has a snarky attitude that she'll use on anyone, including her dead-beat father."

"I'm not some fucking ABC Family stereotype," the girl snapped, her neck flushing as her temper rose.

"Has an interest in the occult, which makes others think less of her," Dalca continued. "As she immersed herself in her passion, she pushed away those few people she called friends, as they shied away from her obvious obsession with things that aren't real."

"Fuck you," Jean spit, her long slim fingers unconsciously clutching at her arms as she shivered. "You don't know anything about me."

"Then a classmate gets his hands on an honest-to-God book of magic, and can't do anything with it," Dalca guessed. "So he and his friends bring it to the goth chick, who all-too-eagerly translates as much text as she can with some 'application' on her 'smart phone'." He made sure to imply the words were strange and alien to him, just like they would be to a wizard.

His gaze turned back to the book in his lap. "She can't translate all of it, but she can sound out the syllables of the rest. She figures out what's required for the spells, and helps the other kids with the ritual, not realizing the text has been modified."

The girl had been sulking up until the last. She sat up slightly, taking an interest. "What do you mean, modified?"

Dalca's fingers continued to trace the pages of the book, his tactile sense picking up on the subtle difference in the inks that his eyes could not. His intangible senses could feel the distinctive auras of the two; the original contents of the book were almost sterile compared to the greasy, soiled words that had been added at some later date. "It's a form of water magic," he informed her. "Someone I know is quite good at it. They can manipulate dry ink as if it were still wet."

He held up the book. "Someone used magic to adjust the text. They added additional pieces to these rituals. That alien text that you couldn't read?" he explained. "That's the bad bit. The bit that caused all of this."

"But there was nothing bad with the rituals," Jean protested defiantly. "Just some simple ingredients and an animal sacrifice." When Dalca's eyebrow arched up, she quickly added. "But we didn't kill them. They were just used as… foci or something."

"Under normal circumstances, yes," Dalca admitted as he looked over a random spell. "These are thaumaturgic spells that create a sympathetic link between the caster and the totem. This one is for enhanced senses similar to whatever animal is used in the ritual."

"Yeah," Jean confirmed. "There are others that make you stronger, or faster, or more agile. But there are some that are for kinetics, or elemental spells."

"Like your fire, air, and heat spells," Dalca agreed. "There's evocation spells in here as well."

The girl nodded. "We used a bunch of them. Some last longer than others."

"Your strength spell," Dalca guessed, recalling the blow she'd landed that had exceeded normal human limits. "Most likely tied to a large, powerful animal?"

"A black bear," she confirmed.

"How did you all capture a black bear?" Dalca asked, honestly surprised.

"Well, we started small," Jean admitted. "The first one was just a rabbit one of the boys bought. It gave us lots of energy, you know?" she said, a slight flush rising through her cheeks.

"I imagine so," Dalca said dryly. He could guess what kind of energy the teens had drawn from a frisky rabbit.

"None of us wanted to hurt the thing, but when we were done, it just ran off," she insisted. "So we started doing more and more. We started using the powers to capture bigger animals, which in turn made us stronger."

She had no idea just how much stronger. From what Dalca had seen, the original spells had been designed to not only give the caster a temporary link to the totem animal, but were also intended to increase their magical capacity. Given enough time, it would have given the kids _real_ power. Maybe not to the level of White Council members, but power all the same.

"When did you realize something else was going on?"

Jean suddenly grew reticent. "It wasn't like that."

"No?" Dalca pressed.

"Really," Jean insisted. "Look, we were all hopped up on the power, you know? I mean, at one point we were running as fast as a cougar, and as strong as a bear. It was incredible. We couldn't stop."

That was easy enough to believe. Human teenagers always seemed to think they were invincible, but for those that had suddenly found power and abilities they'd only read about in comics, the desire to abuse those gifts must have been severe.

"I was right there with the others," Jean admitted softly. "But they seemed… I don't know, like they were obsessed with it?" she said, as if trying to understand it herself. "I was fine with doing a spell every couple of days, but they were casting them daily. And then they started skipping classes to do more. They couldn't get enough."

"This type of magic can be addictive," Dalca informed her. "You weren't tempted as well?"

"Sure, maybe," she confirmed. "But I saw their obsession for what it was, and it kind of scared me."

Dalca gave her a weighing look. "Perhaps your previous experience with magic, however insignificant, increased your tolerance. Allowed you to resist the pull."

"I don't know," Jean said with a shrug. "I mean, I still wanted to do it, but not like them. By the end, they were casting spells several times a day. But then…"

"What?" Dalca asked, sensing they were getting to the crux.

"It… it was Garth that finally scared me away," Jean said softly, looking away from Dalca's intense gaze. "We were hunting another bear. We'd tracked it, and had surrounded it. Garth was tripping on power, and started taunting the bear. Running in real fast and smacking it, pissing it off."

Dalca waited her out. She took a minute, but finally continued. "The bear eventually clipped him. Caught him with his claws, tore up his side," she explained, gesturing as she spoke. "It wasn't anything too bad. But Garth… he went mad with rage."

Sympathetic magics with animals were dangerous in that way. If someone did too much, they began to lose a piece of themselves to the nature of the animals they bonded with. Day by day, bit by bit, the kids had likely started losing that which made them human.

Dalca waited for her to finish, but Jean was clearly nervous. Before he could prompt her, though, another voice spoke up from the back of the room.

"He killed it," Mary said, having finally finished with her shower. She was dressed in fresh clothes she'd brought, and had stopped halfway through braiding her damp hair. Her voice was soft and her eyes haunted as she finished Jean's story. "He tore it to pieces with his bare hands. He… he was covered in blood."

She trailed off as well, and Dalca looked between the two of them. "That was when you stopped?" he guessed.

" _I_ did," Jean confirmed. Mary just looked away. "I knew they were going too far. I told them to stop, but they wouldn't listen. So I stopped, and they just kept on at it."

"You don't know what it was like," Mary said softly, defensively. "It was just so… so…"

"Empowering," Dalca finished for her.

"Yeah," Mary said. "I was disgusted by what he'd done, but a part of me… a part of me loved it." She sounded revolted by her own words. "So we kept doing it. Sometimes we'd hunt to find animals to use in the rituals, and sometimes… sometimes we just hunted."

Dalca kept his gaze on Mary. "When did they start using humans?"

The plump girl wouldn't meet his gaze. "They started talking about it a little over a week ago," she said. "There are rituals in there for humans. To be able to do what they can do, know what they know," she explained, nodding toward the book. "They wanted to use it on Frank Lee."

She sighed nervously. "I told them not to. Said it was going too far. And they agreed," she said, her eyes finally rising to his. "But then I found out they did it anyway, when I wasn't around."

"So Frank Lee was the first," Dalca concluded.

"The only," Mary insisted. "When I found out, I knew they had to stop. So I went to Jean."

Dalca's gaze shifted to the slim girl, who nodded. "I agreed to help. When they went out on a hunt, I went to the hollow, and stole the book."

Dalca sat back. "But they came after you?"

"Yeah," Jean confirmed. "They checked with Mary first, not knowing she was involved. She called to warn me, and I got away before they arrived."

"Then they figured out what I'd done, and came after _me_ ," Mary said softly. "They hurt me, trying to force me to tell them where she was. But I didn't know."

"I holed up in the Miller's house," Jean volunteered. "They winter down south. I knew I couldn't go home, so I just hid. When I didn't hear from Mary, I figured they'd gotten to her. So I stashed the book and went to find her."

Mary was holding herself tightly. "They didn't believe me. They threatened my parents. But when that didn't work, they took them, and just left me tied up."

"Bait," Dalca said softly.

"Yeah," Jean said with a nod. "I got to her, but that's when the first of those things showed up. The chimeras."

"The xenografts," Dalca corrected her. When the girls didn't recognize the word, he explained. "Real chimeras are bred. Those things we saw… they're xenografts. Pieces of different species grafted together."

"One of the xenos came after us as we left," Jean said. "But I roasted it."

"So you went back to your hide-away," Dalca guessed. "Did they find you there?"

"Not at first," Jean said, her scathing look returning as she cast a glance at Mary. "Not until _someone_ used a spell in the book."

"We don't know that's how they found us," Mary protested. "And I was crashing. I… I needed to use a spell, just a little one," she explained as she turned to Dalca. "I caught a mouse. I just wanted to use its senses to listen, in case anyone came close to the house."

"That would do it," Dalca said quietly.

"You can't know that," Mary insisted.

"Actually, I can," Dalca said coldly while holding up the book. "I can't read all of this, but I can get a sense of it. There's a cadence to certain spells. One of the things added to this book was a sacrificial prayer to a demon."

Both girls gasped at that, no doubt thinking of some feeble monster they'd seen in their movies or television. "Not from hell," he said, to avoid any pointless questions about ownership of their souls. "A demon from somewhere else." Dalca's fingers traced the spells, and was sure he was interpreting them correctly. "The original spells were harmless to the animals, but the modifications made them actual sacrifices. After you used the spell on the mouse, it was nothing more than a puppet for the demon. It knew exactly where you were."

"But they were still alive," Jean said of the sacrifices, clearly un-accepting of the fact that they'd performed ritualistic killings..

"No, they weren't," Dalca said with a shake of his head. "Not really. The modified ritual offered them up as hosts to the demon. They weren't big enough to actually host all of it; not by far. But every time you completed a ritual, you let another piece of the demon into our world."

"But the bonds…" Mary trailed off. "They faded. Wouldn't its hold have faded too?"

"The animals probably lived for a few more days," Dalca said. "While they lived, your thaumaturgic bonds remained active, but eventually faded when they died. At that point, the corpse was left in control of the demon."

Dalca shook his head. "Each of these rituals was intended to bring more of the demon across. My guess is that, if you'd finished them all, it would have fully manifested in our world."

"Oh God," Jean said, her eyes widening. "Ol' Frank…"

"…was just the first," Dalca finished, even if that wasn't where the girl was going with the thought. "What's left of him, and the others that have died since, are nothing more than meat puppets for the demon." Dalca glanced down at the book. "If any of them have remained alive, they may retain some sense of themselves, and even a sliver of free will. But they've been possessed by something much more powerful than they are."

"What… what others?" Mary whispered. Dalca and Jean shared a look. "We stole the book. They couldn't… they couldn't do anymore."

Dalca sighed. The girl still hadn't admitted to herself that it was her father's arm that had graced that first xenograft they'd seen in the yard. Or perhaps she didn't know. She'd been curled up in a ball for most of the fight.

"Go get cleaned up," Dalca told Jean, who stood and retrieved her bag. Before she got far, Dalca thought of something else. "Wait."

He rose and retrieved his stiletto, which caused both girls to stiffen. He approached Jean first, and held out his palm. "Give me your hand. I need to test your blood."

"M-My blood?" the thin girl stammered. Clearly she'd heard about what wizards could do with another's blood, and was worried what the warden might intend.

"I need to know how corrupted you might be," Dalca said truthfully. "Both of you have been exposed to dark magics, the kind that can slowly erode your humanity." He saw them exchange nervous glances. "All I need is a couple of drops. I swear on my power that I will not use it to hurt either of you."

Not that swearing on his power would mean anything. Such trappings were the concern of mortals and Fae. Dalca's power was his and his alone. He held no obligation to anyone but himself, and wore no bonds of servitude like the Sidhe.

The girls didn't know that, and accepted his hollow words.

Retrieving two cups from the room's coffee maker, he pricked each girl to draw a few drops of blood from each. With his samples taken, he sent them both back to the bathroom.

Knowing Mary would only be gone as long as it took to clean the small cut and dress the wound, Dalca worked quickly. As soon as they were out of sight, he dipped a finger into Jean's cup, and brought a bloody digit to his tongue.

A slight tingle rippled across Dalca's skin as he savored the flavor of the girl. The blood tasted like all mortal blood, and was unremarkable on its own. The true uniqueness was in their spirit, which infused their blood as they lived.

But those with power were different. Along with their blood came the barest trace of their true strength. If he'd worked the girl's emotional state before cutting her, no doubt the few drops of blood would have been infused with more of her energy. As it was, her fear was palpable, and supplied enough emotion to impart both the level of her power, and the nature of it.

She was far from what it'd take to be considered Council-level, but she had power. No doubt the spells she'd participated in had increased her own ability, as Dalca had suspected.

More importantly, the girl wasn't completely given over to corruption.

There was a darkness to some mortal magics that would turn a good man bad. Their selfish desires were bolstered by power, revealing their true darker nature. Magic would corrupt them just as easily as political or monetary power would.

But even the darkest part of the human soul was no match for the darkness from beyond. There was a deeper corruption that came from Outside, one that stripped away every shred of humanity, until there was nothing left but a husk. And when it was empty, when the human mind had been twisted and turned into something altogether broken, an Outsider would worm its way in.

There was darkness in Jean, but not the worst kind.

Whether she'd subconsciously sensed the danger or not, she'd stopped herself from going too far. She'd spared herself from possession of an Outsider, even if she hadn't spared the others.

The girl's power was tainted but mortal, and good enough to eat.

She would make a tasty snack, once all of this was done.

Mary would not.

He could tell as soon as the metallic tang of her blood touched his tongue. The darker nature was present. It was the tiniest sliver of emptiness in her spirit; not true possession, like with those sacrificed to the demon. But having participated in more rituals, the bond between Mary and the demon was greater.

She was not beyond redemption. Given time, and effort, she might be free of it.

Unfortunately, Dalca could give her neither.

Hearing the door open, Dalca placed the cups on the table. He turned to see Mary step out as the sound of the running shower spilled from behind her. She closed the door and gazed tentatively at the man she thought was a warden, who might just spare her life.

"What did you mean, the others?" she asked as Dalca turned back to the table. He used his stiletto to carve some random patterns into the top, which the girls would mistake for an actual spell. "They couldn't have done any more rituals without the book."

"You used the book every time?" Dalca asked as he worked. When he was finished, he smeared their blood into the center, as if it would tell him something.

"Well… not after we got the hang of each," Mary admitted. "But they'd only done the… the human spell once."

"What makes you think the demon wouldn't have them use one of the other spells on humans?" he countered, turning to level a stony glare. "Humans have much more power than any common animal. The benefits to some of the bonds wouldn't be as obvious, but there'd still be plenty."

"You… you mean…" Mary began, even as her jaw trembled.

"You said they took your parents?" Dalca asked softly. When the girl failed to reply, Dalca shook his head. "They took Jean's father, too. And the Lams, and the Smiths, and the Gagnons," he added as he recalled each of the families taken.

"That's… that's all of them," Mary realized with horror. "That's Stan's family, and G-Garth's, and Kevin's…"

"Was Cameron Gagnon participating in the rituals as well?" Dalca asked, recalling the name of the younger brother.

"N-No…" Mary said. "Kevin didn't want him to."

"Well, he was taken as well," Dalca informed her. "They're all gone as of this morning."

All gone, to be used as hosts for the Outsider the children had inadvertently summoned to reality. At least eleven human hosts, with countless animals as well. There was no hope for the mindless beasts, but there was always a chance that the humans could have survived the process.

But now the demon was experimenting. Even if the humans lived through the ritual, the Outsider wouldn't let them resist its efforts. They were nothing more than pieces to the puzzle. Flesh to consume as it built a body for itself within reality.

"My mom… my dad?" Mary pleaded, her eyes widening as she finally realized what Jean had known all long. "No… no…"

"I'm sorry," Dalca lied. "They are most likely lost. But if you tell me where—"

His words were cut short as the long blare of a car horn cut through the night. Dalca spun around as it disappeared just as quickly as it had sounded. He started toward the door, knowing Mara would only have signaled if she was sure the enemy was close.

He was halfway there when the front window shattered beneath the weight of a massive xenograft. The thing was huge, much larger than anything Dalca had seen yet. But as its familiar suid head turned toward him, Dalca realized that it wasn't something new; it'd simply been repaired with more flesh. The boar-headed chimera stood there for a moment, its human throat spasming and belching its hideous laughter.

And then it, and the other dozen chimeras behind it, surged into motion as they flung themselves forward.


	7. Chapter 7

Chapter 7

Dalca had a split second to observe the changes to the xenograft before it was upon him. He was sure it was the same that had first emerged from the woods, as the rotting head and throat looked to be identical to that which he'd seen before.

The suid body it'd possessed before had been burned under Jean's attack, perhaps too badly to salvage. It now possessed the upper body of a black bear, although it too was stripped of any trace of hair. The lower half was human, as was its legs. Just like before, one arm was ursine, while the other still held the telltale marking on its bicep.

"Oh God," Mary moaned as she caught sight of the tattoo.

Dalca didn't have any time to spare her, for his attention was on the first xenograft as it crashed into him. The weight of it was surprising, as was its power and speed. It blurred past Dalca's delayed response, closing on him in an instant. The human hand held fast to Dalca's right shoulder as the ursine paw raked down across his chest.

It was a crushing blow, one that would have eviscerated a human even as it turned their bones to dust. But Dalca was no human, and as the claws scraped against at him, his skin shifted into a hardened reptilian hide. Pieces of ursine nail broke free as Dalca's flesh and muscle proved too resistant.

But just because Dalca's body was tough didn't mean that he didn't feel pain. The force of the blow dropped him to a knee, and he fought to catch his breath as the thing swung again and again, looking for any weak spot in Dalca's hide, and settling for crushing him when it failed to do so.

Dalca managed to get his right hand up to the thing's chest between blows, and power surged through his arm as black lightning erupted from his fingertips. The unnatural light crackled across the xenograft's body, turning flesh into atomized cinder. He poured enough power into it to cause the entire body to burst apart, sending its limbs flying as the magics the demon used to animate it broke down under the assault.

But the boar's head wheezed out one last satisfied laugh as a second large xenograft replaced the first.

The thing slammed into Dalca hard enough to send him into the drywall. Numerous hands clutched and raked at him, trying to pin him down as a feline jaw snapped at his neck. It too had the unnatural power of the first, and Dalca quickly found himself outmatched as smaller chimeras swarmed in around it.

One looked like a lumpy round mass of black flesh with wings. Only when it flew into his face did Dalca realize that the thing's spherical body was nothing more than a thousand spider corpses crammed together. Their tiny legs writhed as their heads all bit and chewed at his face, trying and failing to inject their venom with their fangs.

While Dalca was recoiling from that, another xenograft wrapped itself around his legs. He couldn't see it through the others, but it felt distinctly like an octopus made of snakes. Some tentacles clung to him like pythons constricting their prey, while others snapped and recoiled, biting at his legs again and again. At its core the thing had an eagle or hawk beak, which worked tirelessly at one kneecap, trying to crush Dalca's bones with thousands of pounds of pressure per inch.

Any one of them would have been easy enough to handle, had they not all crashed into him and gone about their bloody work in less than a second. They moved with supernatural speed, the likes of which Dalca was hard pressed to match in his current form.

He was sorely tempted to cut loose, and let this demon learn just what it was dealing with. But he held back, knowing that he still needed information from the girls.

Information they'd be loath to give him, should they see his true form.

Instead, Dalca worked his wrists, which were pinned by human hands. When he could curl his fingers down far enough, he sent another trickle of black lightning out. It wasn't much, but the red nimbus and coiling black light chewed their way through the arms holding him.

The hands still gripped his wrists tightly, leaving their ends dangling loosely as they were severed from the body. But at least they no longer had the power and leverage of the larger form, and Dalca didn't hesitate to take advantage.

Burning hot claws extended from reptilian fingers as Dalca tore at the large xenograft. The rends he left in its flesh steamed and sizzled. A furious howl from the cougar's head was cut short when Dalca ripped its throat out, and then the head exploded as black lightning erupted from the claws he sank into its scalp.

With the larger chimera savaged, Dalca was free to work at the others. The spiderhawk was crushed in his grasp even as he tore the snake limbs from his legs. The eagle beak bit at his hand, but Dalca swung it around to crush it against the wall.

And then he was free, free to face the other half dozen xenografts that remained in the small hotel room.

Dalca studied the others in the moment he had. One was dragging Mary toward the front window as another retrieved the spellbook from where he'd left it on the bed. A third was heading for the back, where a nude and wet Jean had just emerged from the bathroom.

The rest all turned to Dalca.

He didn't wait for them to arrive.

Thick shafts of black lightning shot across the room, taking two in the chest. The bolts left gaping holes in them, and the two staggered to the floor as Dalca trained another blast on the third.

The chimera he'd seen heading for the rear suddenly flew back toward the front, caught on a ferocious wind spell that slammed it into the wall next to the window. Before it could recover, a fireball exploded against its chest, and the thing sagged to the carpet.

Dalca cast a glance back at Jean, and saw her small chest heaving from the exertion. That was probably the best she was going to be able to manage, but at least she was putting up a fight.

All Mary did as they dragged her from the room was scream.

Dalca lifted a hand and shot another blast at the winged chimera heading for the window. The flying beaver disintegrated, but the book it carried tumbled through the air toward the front. A clawed hand caught it, and Dalca trained his attention on the last xenograft to arrive.

Only, this one was different.

Unlike the others, the new chimera possessed a human head. It lacked any hair, but there was no mistaking the round dome of a young man. Intelligent eyes swiveled to Dalca as the bear claw pulled the book tight to its chest. That the demon had bothered to give it an opposable thumb was admirable, if somewhat alarming. Its experiments were expanding as it learned to manipulate the flesh; the cancerous lumps were barely present on its most recent creations.

While the xenograft's head was human, the mouth was not. Everything from nose to jaw had been replaced with a canine snout, which curled back into an angry snarl.

"Idiots," the boy growled out, his mortal voice twisted by the animal mouth. "You're both idiots. Why did you resist her? She'll give us everything we've ever wanted."

"Garth?!" Jean gasped, recognizing what had once been a fellow warlock.

The boy's eyes fixated on her, and something dark glinted in them as he looked over her nude form. He was also naked, and his thoughts were apparent as blood rushed to his lower extremity. "You should have joined us when you had the chance, Jean. We could have had so much _fun_." The dog's tongue lolled out of his mouth as the canine lips curled into a smile. "But I suppose I'll still have fun. Over and over again." His voice grew husky as his head tilted down. "With the parts she doesn't want."

Jean shouted in disgust as she unleashed another fireball spell. It took the last of her energy to do it, and she collapsed to her knees as it soared at the boy.

Her gasp of surprise matched Dalca's own when the boy waved an empty bear paw before him, and a shimmering shield appeared in its wake. The fireball erupted against it, and then the boy burst into barking laughter.

"You never did get the hang of that one," he giggled hoarsely. "Too bad you won't get another chance."

The boy started to move forward, but something held him back. Dalca looked down to see the remnants of some chimera clutching at the boy's leg.

" _The book_ ," the thing hissed, the lumps on its body seeming to throb with its breath. It held itself aloft on what looked like tentacles, but had to be made from animal parts native to the cold north. They were simply too twisted, too deformed to be recognizable.

"Take it," the boy said, passing the tome off carelessly. "I want to enjoy her before you take her apart."

The thing moved to where he'd thrown the book. Dalca wanted to say that it had legs churning beneath the mass of fleshy tentacles, but they didn't seem to work the way they should. Writhing limbs reached for the leather-bound grimoire as Dalca lifted an arm toward it.

Black lightning shot through the space between them, but the blast was intercepted by the shield that flickered back into existence. Dalca fired another blast, and watched the edges of the shaped energy crackle and weaken beneath the dark light. The red nimbus of fire did more damage to the energy construct than the black lightning, but it wasn't enough to break through on its own.

Garth's magical ability had clearly benefited from the more frequent spells.

"Is that all a warden has to offer?" he croaked as the odd chimera slipped out the window with the book.

Dalca blurred forward, faster than a human should have been able to track. But the boy was no longer entirely human, and was fueled by who knew how many spells from the book. Just like the other xenografts, his speed had been enhanced by ritual bonds. He turned as Dalca came, and thrust the surface of the shield at him.

Dalca bounced off the wall of energy, and was sent flying back across the room. He hit the far bed and rolled off the back, coming to a crouch as he looked back toward the front.

"I'll admit, I'm impressed," Dalca said as he eyed the boy. "Your master has taught you a lot in a short amount of time."

Garth didn't seem to like the idea of having a master, but didn't let it wipe the sneer from his canine face. "She's given me more power with every ritual. And now that we've got the book back, she'll give me even more."

"She?" Dalca asked as he shifted to his right, and closer to the kneeling Jean.

"Shyeth, right hand to the great Corrupter of Flesh himself," Garth replied eagerly. "She has given us incredible power. And when she is ready, she will remake us into whatever we wish."

"I'm sure," Dalca said, making sure to fill his words with disbelief. The boy started an angry retort, but Dalca cut him off. "Don't bother, I don't really care."

"Fine!" the boy shouted as he braced himself. "I'll show you—AARGH!"

Garth's words turned into a pained scream as Mara appeared on his shoulder. She was covered in gore, although none of it was hers. Dalca watched her sink her claws into his flesh as the air around her shimmered. He knew from experience what would come next, and watched as the water vâlvă manipulated the fluids in the boy's body.

Garth's skin spasmed as the water and blood inside spun like a whirlpool. Mara grinned fiercely as the boy's blood pressure built so quickly that his skin became bloated. Within seconds, it became too much for his flesh to contain.

If you've ever seen anyone's skin get flayed open from a high powered pressure washer, it was like that.

Only, from the inside out.

The boy's blood spun until it shredded his veins and organs, and then burst out from beneath his skin. The entire hotel room became bathed in gore as ten pints of sanguine fluids doused everything in sight.

Knowing what was coming, Dalca had lifted the mattress in front of him. He'd even moved it to cover the still crouching Jean, who's eyes looked like they were about to burst from her head as she listened to the sound of her friend splattering across the room.

It's not that he wanted to spare her the trauma of seeing him die, or the emotional burden of being drenched in the blood of someone she knew.

He just didn't want to waste time while she showered a second time.

Dalca released the mattress, letting it fall once the show was over. He looked to Mara, who came to rest on the top of a lamp.

"The one with the book?" he asked her.

"Gone," she confirmed as she licked the blood from her claws. "I had to choose between stopping it and saving you."

"I would have been fine," Dalca growled as Jean surged to her feet and ran toward the bathroom. She was retching before she made it to the tile floor.

"You didn't look fine," replied the little blue fairy covered head to toe in blood. Her hands fell to her hips in a chastising manner. "Some warden you are. That little freak was tossing you around like a rag doll."

" _Strategy_ , Mara," Dalca explained somewhat petulantly. He held up the sword he'd recovered while rolling across the bed. "I needed this."

"Right," the water vâlvă said as she rolled her eyes. "That's what—" Her head swiveled to one side. "Someone's coming."

Dalca was already moving. "Jean, get dressed and gather your things. I'll be back." And then he was across the room, opening the door as someone just began to look in the front window.

"What is…" the front desk clerk said, her words trailing off as her eyes widened.

"You should have stayed in your office," Dalca said softly.

She began to turn to him, but his hand closed around her neck in a flash. She gagged as he choked her, and then her feet were kicking as he lifted her from the walkway outside the room.

"Tidy this up," Dalca growled at Mara as she landed on his shoulder, sparing one last glance at the room. The tiny fairy nodded, and then she disappeared back into the killing ground.

Dalca noted the remnants of numerous chimera outside the room as he walked back toward the front office, the clerk dangling from his grasp. Clearly Mara had amused herself before coming to his rescue.

When they reached the office, Dalca locked the door behind them and pulled the shades. The woman gagged as she beat her fists against his wrist, but he paid her no mind as he turned off the 'OPEN' sign as well as the lights.

Dalca spent a trickle of power into manipulating the woman's emotions. Her terror was immediately replaced with something akin to angst-filled lust. He might have done more for her, but time was of the essence.

In the scant illumination seeping in through the blinds, the woman could barely make out his teeth as they sharpened.

"Don't worry," he said softly as his fingers grew into claws. "It'll be over soon."

* * *

A few minutes later, Dalca returned to the hotel room to find a near-panicked Jean dressed and clutching her bags. Her wide-eyed gaze focused on him, as if somehow he was the only thing normal in a world gone mad.

If only she knew.

"Retrieve my cloak from the bathroom," he instructed her as he strode into the room. The girl moved automatically to obey.

While he'd been gone, Mara had been busy. Using her magics, she'd cleared a path through the room. It was winding, as she'd chosen to circumnavigate the bits of flesh littered everywhere. Dalca strode through the clean section of cheap carpet, retrieving his things as he went. Mara had removed every last trace of blood from his weapons and case, and he'd gathered everything by the time Jean re-emerged from the bathroom.

She handed him the cloak wordlessly, and then followed him out to the vehicle. They loaded everything in, and then he left her sitting in the car while it warmed up.

Mara landed on his shoulder as he scorched a pattern onto the wall of the hotel room. "It seems one of the other guests called in the disturbance. But they didn't come out; they just called the front desk."

"Good," Dalca said. "I took care of things in the office." He cast a glance back over his shoulder. "Toss every last bit of glass and flesh back inside, and close up the window with some ice. Hopefully no-one will notice before dawn."

The water vâlvă sighed, but she disappeared in a flash as she fulfilled his orders. Dalca remained until the burning brand was finished. He eyed it long enough to see the flakes of ash falling from the enclosing circle, and then headed to the front.

By the time he got there, everything that had been possessed of the Outsider was in the hotel room, and a thin sheen of ice had appeared in the window-frame. Dalca drew the blinds and turned off the lights, and looked it over from outside. If anyone got too close, they'd see the window wasn't quite right, but none of the carnage was visible from the sidewalk.

Satisfied, he and Mara climbed into the warm vehicle. The little fairy's teeth were chattering from manipulating the frozen water, and she draped herself across one of the vents spewing forth hot air.

"You're just going to leave that mess until dawn?"

"No need to draw attention yet," Dalca said as he pulled away from the hotel. "We'll swing by the precinct to handle things there, and then Jean will show us where they've been completing the rituals."

He glanced at the girl as he said it, but she was still in shock. She simply focused a wide-eyed look on the little blue form on the dash, and said nothing.

"Do you know where they'll be?" Dalca asked her.

The girl nodded absently, still trying to work through everything she'd seen.

Dalca drove on.


	8. Chapter 8

Chapter 8

The countryside around White River made up a small part of the watershed around Lake Superior. In the few warm months of the year, the countless lakes, ponds, and waterways were thawed, providing plenty of locales for recreational activities. The namesake of the town was a winding waterway just to its west, beyond the railroad tracks.

In some ice age long since passed, a glacier had cut through the area. The earth shifted, and the waterways shifted with it. A rise in the land had changed the course of the river, sending it further east.

But while most of the river waters had moved around the newly formed hill, a determined trickle wormed its way _under_ the land. In time, the trickle grew, until a moderately sized subterranean river was cut beneath the landscape. It rejoined the river further south, with none the wiser overhead.

Eventually the railroad and highway were installed, and the town of White River grew into a sprawling metropolis of five hundred residents, give or take a few snow birds. Logging businesses were established nearby, and used the railroad and highway to their advantage.

Unaware of the subterranean river, mankind did what they always did. They moved land, uprooted trees, leveled hills, and made the earth into something useful to them. With their machines, they managed to do what the hill had not: stop the flow of water.

The surface of the water around White River rose when the subterranean passage became inaccessible. In time, the water drained out of the hollow earth, until there was nothing left but a dark, dank grotto that never saw the light of day.

Jean wasn't sure who had discovered the tunnel that led down to the hollow. She hadn't known about it until the others had taken her there. When they realized they needed to perform rituals — the kind they couldn't risk people finding out about — they'd led her out to the hill west of the town, and down the earthen path into the grotto.

It was there, in the dark of the earth, that they began to unknowingly summon an unearthly darkness.

Jean lead Dalca west, where they then took a winding road that cut across the river before making its way back east. Eventually they turned off the main road onto something not much more than a game trail, where they scaled the slight incline of the hill.

When the trail grew too narrow for the Land Rover, Dalca parked.

"It's just a hundred feet more," Jean said softly. "The tunnel is beneath the roots of the fallen tree."

"Alright. Can you shoot?" Dalca asked.

The girl didn't answer one way or the other, but he still passed her his stiletto and pistol. "Careful with that," he said, indicating the Luger. "The rounds are enchanted, and will explode upon impact. If something other than me comes out here, take it out. If I'm not back by sunrise, just leave. And don't stop running."

The girl nodded, and Dalca wondered if she would go as soon as he was out of sight. That was the smart play. Why wait to see if the monster or warden won? Both were liable to kill her. Let them fight it out, and the victor could hunt her if they wished.

That's what she _should_ do. But something told Dalca that she wouldn't run. She wasn't the type.

"Why didn't you run?" he asked, looking out the front window. When the girl turned, he looked her in the eyes. "After Mary used the spell, you returned home."

"Who would want to run away with Mary Li?" Jean whispered, a little of her fight returning.

"You didn't have to go for her," Dalca observed. "You weren't friends. You had the book. You could have hopped the train, and been hundreds of miles away by now."

Jean looked out the window. "They took my father."

Dalca's eyes narrowed. "From what I'd heard, he wasn't much of one."

"He wasn't," Jean replied, and her heart confirmed the truth to her words. "He was about as bad as they come. Well," she amended, her head tilting. "He could have been worse. He beat me, but he never laid a hand on me." She shivered at the thought. "Not that he needed to, with all the rail-whores he bedded."

Dalca wasn't exactly sure what a rail-whore was, or how such a small town like White River could sport much in the way of prostitution. "So you miss him?" he asked.

"God no," Jean said with a roll of her eyes. "If anything, I just want to make sure he doesn't come back. I don't want to have him turn up later and claim anymore child support because of me."

There was more to it than that, but Dalca didn't get the impression that it was rooted in any tenderness for the man. "The truth," he said, his voice hardening.

Jean gave an exasperated sigh. "Fine. The truth," she spat, her temper flaring to help cut through the remnants of her shock. "The truth is I don't care one way or the other about him. I want my stuff."

Again her words rang with truth. Dalca blinked as she continued. "They used _my_ stuff for the rituals. Things I had to work hard to get. It's not easy building up magical supplies in a back-fucking-water town like this."

"You…" Dalca started, trying to keep a straight face. "You stayed and cowered in a cold house, leaving the heat off so they wouldn't realize you'd returned, keeping yourself and Mary alive with warming spells and scraps of food, for days… just for a couple witchery bowls and shit?"

"Fuck you!" Jean shouted, her face growing hot with embarrassment. "It's all I had! And those fuckers stashed it away somewhere! The idiots left the God-damned _book_ lying out, but they had to hide my fucking brew kit!"

In the face of her indignant anger, Dalca couldn't hold back. He couldn't help it.

He laughed.

He laughed, and she scowled, and Mara just rolled her eyes on the dash.

"I… I'm sorry," Dalca sputtered as he tried to hold it back. A warden wouldn't laugh at that, and he was supposed to be one. "I'm sorry. It's just… your kind just amuses the hell out of me sometimes."

" _My_ kind?" the girl snapped. "You mean warlocks?"

 _No_ , Dalca thought. _I meant humans_.

He couldn't remember the last time one had made him laugh, though. Not genuinely. He spent little time with them. And who could blame him? Who wanted to spend much time talking to their food?

But the girl, who had lost her father, and lost those she'd learned magic with, who'd faced inhuman monsters, survived days on the run with the barest of essentials, and had watched a boy she'd known explode into wet wallpaper, was upset.

About misplacing her myrrh and sage.

Dalca ended up laughing again. And he didn't try to stop.

He was tired of playing a dour faced warden. It was tiring, and he'd only been at it for less than twelve hours. Acting so rigid, so pompous, so judgmental. It was exhausting work, being a wizard.

"Alright," he finally said, letting his mirth run out. "If I can, I'll see if I can bring back your… brew kit."

The girl glared at him, clearly unamused by his amusement. But eventually she saw that he wasn't mocking her, and she gave a tiny huffed breath. "Fine. Thank you."

"What does it look like?"

"It's a travel trunk," she replied.

"Black?"

The definitely-not-a-goth-chick glared again at his tone. And he wondered if maybe he shouldn't have given her the stiletto and gun until _after_ he was out of the car.

"Alright, alright," Dalca said, patting the air. "I'll retrieve your trunk."

The girl's eyes narrowed, and Dalca realized he was letting a little too much of himself seep through. She was observant, having picked up on things faster than others. And now she was sensing that something was off about her warden. That maybe she'd misjudged him.

Not that that would matter by morning.

Dalca reached into the back to retrieve the sword. "Stay here."

Suddenly the girl was nervous again, and she clutched at the stiletto as he climbed out of the car. Mara came with him, and balanced herself on his shoulder as he strode up the game trail.

"What's the plan?" she asked.

"I go in. I kill everything," he replied.

"What about me?" Mara said, suddenly indignant when she realized she wasn't being invited to join.

"I need you to make sure nothing gets out," Dalca explained. "Every last piece of this thing has to be burned and buried. There's no telling what will happen if even one host gets away."

"Ugh, fine," the water vâlvă groaned, her illicium bobbing as she rolled not just her eyes but her entire head. "Next you'll be telling me to watch over the girl and keep her safe."

"Good point. Do that, too."

" _What?!_ " Mara cried, looking at him as if he'd gone mad.

"This is probably going to be tiring," Dalca reminded her. "I tasted her blood; she's not infected."

"Oh. Right," Mara said, begrudgingly conceding the point. "I thought you might be considering…"

Dalca arched an eyebrow. Mara rolled her eyes, along with her head and shoulders and knees as her voice filled with despair. "Oh, you _are_ …"

"Just watch for any xenografts, and make sure my meal is ready when I come out," Dalca ordered.

"Yes, my liege," the water vâlvă said, snapping a sarcastic salute. "Whatever you say, your highness. At your command, my master." Dalca shot her a look. "By your leave, _your grace_."

With her mocking tone still lurking in the air, the little blue fairy disappeared. Dalca continued up the path until he reached the fallen tree, and spotted the shadowed cavity where the roots has been torn up. The earth had indeed caved in beneath it, revealing a small subterranean shaft leading down.

The snow to his left crunched as something approached. He spared it a glance as it stepped into sight.

"So you've come to die," a boy said between feline lips.

Dalca's eyes narrowed as he studied the boy. It took him a moment to recognize the features of Kevin Gagnon. He looked nothing like the photo in the police file.

Of course, that was understandable. Back then, he hadn't had the body of moose.

He was lacking the antlers, but the rest of it was there. His torso had been grafted onto the body where the beast's neck had been. He looked a bit like a centaur, except no centaur Dalca had ever seen had a cougar jaw, or a variety of claws and talons protruding along its arms and spine.

Dalca drew his sword and activated the spell that made the blade as hot as a kiln.

Seeing the weapon, the boy raised both jagged arms before him, and a shield similar to what Garth had used appeared between them. "Just try it, wizard," Kevin said snidely. "Shyeth has made me powerful, and will give me even more after I bring her your corpse."

"How are you going to do that?" Dalca mused. "You can't fit that body down this hole."

The boy's still-human eyes blinked, and Dalca realized he hadn't considered that. He barked out another laugh, which grew an angry glare from what used to be Kevin Gagnon. Dalca could sense the power the boy started to draw into his palms.

Dalca didn't have time for any more peons. Now that he knew what he was dealing with, it was time to end things. No more games, no more subterfuge. Just monster versus monster, winner take all.

Lightning quick, Dalca threw the sword at the boy, the spell on it still making the dark blade appear silver as it twirled in the moonlight. Kevin's arms stiffened, holding the shield out before him. It glowed with an unnatural light as he poured more energy into it.

But for all of its power, it was born of mortal magic.

The warden's blade went through it as if it were nothing more than rice paper.

The boy's eyes widened as the heated blade sank to the hilt, burying itself in his gut. It was almost sad to see the tears build up in his eyes as he realized all of his power was useless against the enchanted sword.

Dalca twisted his wrist, and the boy's transformed body erupted into flames just like the bonfire in the Wilson's backyard.

When there was nothing left but ash, Dalca retrieved the sword and strode toward the hole in the ground. Just short of it, he sank the blade into the earth, where it sizzled and melted the snow. When it was cool enough, he removed the warden's cloak and draped it over the hilt. The rest of his clothing joined it.

Dalca stood before the dimly lit passage, nude save for the checkered tattoo along his left side. He looked down into the dark space where an immortal evil awaited him.

Then, weaponless and alone, he started his descent into the darkness.

* * *

As he made his way down, Dalca was forced to make an effort to block out the pungent aura permeating the demon's lair. It grew as he went, and the sense of corruption grew with it. It was there that the thing had been summoned into reality, and it was there that the sense of its malfeasance was greatest.

So too was its strength.

By the time he reached the grotto, Dalca's eyes had adjusted to the lack of light. His reptilian gaze picked up on the dark hues of the earth, where no life dwelled to warm his vision.

No life, save for that of Stan Smith, the sole remaining mortal that Shyeth could use to summon itself fully into the world.

Under Dalca's thermal vision, the boy's body shone with fiery shades of yellow and orange. It was hard to make out what exactly had been done to him, as the hard lines of reality blurred under the hues of hot and cold. Dalca could make out an extra pair of arms, and perhaps a tail flicked behind him. The rest was lost in the varying shades of heat.

Dalca could see where he knelt beside a ritual circle. There didn't appear to be much to it, all things considered. Some candles, a circle of blood, some crudely painted symbols here and there.

And the limp form of Mary Li in the center.

Stan looked up as Dalca approached. "You're too late. It's done."

Dalca didn't need him to tell him that. He could see that Mary's body was already too cold to be alive. Her clothes had been removed, and he could just make out the differing shades of several sigils that had been hastily painted onto her body. There was still a heat to her, but not the warmth of the living.

And yet, as he watched, her body sat up on its own.

" _Ah, yes_ ," the demon from Outside said in Mary's voice as her lips moved. " _You bring me your flesh. That is what I desire._ "

"Have you fully crossed over?" Dalca asked as he circled around them. Mary's head twisted to follow, the bones and tendons snapping so that it could rotate front to back.

" _No_ ," Not-Mary said, her words sounding oddly inhuman coming from a human voice. " _More rituals are needed. But fear not; you will hold the place of honor, and provide the basis for the final_ —"

Shyeth stopped gloating when the lava line shot out from Dalca's fingers to wrap around his target's neck. The super-heated magma was solid enough to manipulate, but not as hardened as it had been in the colder temperatures of the Wilson's back yard. It burned white-hot, searing the flesh.

And when Dalca tugged it backward, the lava line sheered through the neck, leaving Stan Smith's head free to tumble to the grotto floor.

Shyeth turned Mary's head to look at her dead servitor, the girl's dead eyes blinking. Then her gaze shifted back to Dalca, and he thought he saw a hint of anger in them.

"Oops," he said, shrugging helplessly. "Guess no more summoning rituals tonight."

" _How dare_ —" she began, only to leave the rest unsaid when Mary's head exploded from a direct blast of black lightning.

The rest of her body flopped to the cavern floor. Dalca watched as it continued to move, her hands and legs trying to balance the body without a head to guide it.

He let her struggle with that while he walked to the circle. He found the book beside what was left of Stan, who looked like he might have been a real pain if Dalca had been forced to wrestle with him.

Ignoring the lurching body, as well as the sounds of other things in the dark grotto, Dalca gathered up the supplies that had been laid out for the ritual, and carried them over to the black trunk a few feet away. He dumped all of it inside, including the book and extinguished candles, before closing the lid and snapping the latch.

The stale air stirred as unseen things moved. Not paying them any mind, Dalca carried the trunk over to the tunnel and threw it part of the way up. It wasn't a straight shot to the surface, but it was out of the way.

With that promise kept, Dalca turned back to the black grotto, and the darker shadows that shifted all around him.

"Enough of this," he muttered as he dropped to a knee. Dalca thrust his palm to the ground as he channeled power into his arm, causing the limb to glow with an inner light. Claws extended as his fingers grew and darkened, taking on the blackish red tone and texture of his true form. He sank his nails into the earth, and then poured his power into it.

The wet ground cracked as the air pulsed with heat. The sound of the earth shattering echoed around the enclosed space. Fissures appeared, spreading out from where he knelt. Dalca's arm spasmed as he sent more and more power into the ground, and the fissures began to glow with a red light as they slithered out, snaking back and forth as the damp turf dried.

Within moments, the entire cavern floor was alight with burning crevices, revealing the countless chimeras that clung to the ceiling and walls.

The air shimmered as the temperature rose. Steam rose from the few pockets of water that remained, until the once damp grotto became as dry and brittle as a craggy desert. But unlike any desert mankind had seen, this one teemed with power, as the fissures Dalca had created erupted with several feet of flame.

Dalca rose, and strode into the center of the light. All around him the bodies of Shyeth moved, scuttling back and forth. There was nothing familiar about any of them. It became harder and harder to differentiate between species when they were all hairless and bloated with cancerous sores.

The only thing they all had in common was their hate for him. Covered in sharp fangs and clutching talons, they all stood ready to rend Dalca for his interference. Countless raged-filled eyes stared at him with loathing as he reached the center of the light.

" _You think you are stronger than I?_ " a thousand voices groaned, none of which sounded human, as the Outsider twisted their throats to speak. " _You think to best me? You are nothing but flesh; flesh that I will twist and bend to my will_."

The light shining from within Dalca's arm hadn't dissipated after completing the spell. If anything, it had spread, slowly creeping up and across his body. Light shimmered along the pale stretches of skin between the dark scaled tattoos along his left side, moving like lava beneath igneous rock. It spread across his scalp and down to his toes, filling every inch of his being.

" _You think your fire scares me?_ " Shyeth continued, even as the bodies began to creep across the floor and ceiling. Flesh burned where it crossed over lines of fire, but still they moved, inching ever closer. " _You think to save yourself from me with this pitiful display?_ "

"What, this?" Dalca asked, his voice almost guttural as he turned to look around. "This isn't to hurt you. It's to summon you."

At that, all of the xenografts froze, as countless eyes turned to note that the burning fissures were _not_ haphazard; were _not_ random in their pattern.

No. Those fires had burned into the earth with purpose.

They had created an ancient, elaborate summoning circle.

"SHYETH!" Dalca shouted, his voice booming as he spread his arms to either side, his muscles taut. "SHYETH, SERVANT OF THE CORRUPTER OF FLESH!" His body trembled as power surged through him. "SHYETH, SHE WHO SEEKS FLESH OF THE EARTH TO CLAIM AS HER OWN, **_I SUMMON THEE!_** "

A pulse of power erupted across the cavern, a wave of pressure that rattled the walls. Rocks fell from the exposed roots that formed the ceiling. The power rippled out, not stopping at the edges of the grotto, but extending out through the earth itself and passing into the night sky as it reached for Shyeth wherever she may be.

And then, like a crossbow line freed, the spell snapped back.

And with it, it brought all of Shyeth.

The bodies in the cavern surged forth, dragged from their hiding places by power they could not resist. Those already within the circle stumbled and fell, their odd limbs powerless against the fundamental laws of reality.

And those bodies that she had sent out into the world, to seek out more flesh, or to spare her should she fall there in the cavern, were summoned back against their will.

The circle was almost filled with rotting flesh by the time the air popped, signaling that the summoning was complete. The forms shuttered and shook all around Dalca, retreating back from him as they sought to flee.

But the circle was empowered with Dalca's fiery will, and the forms of Shyeth could not cross over it.

" _You_ _…_ " a million voices cried, some the howl of a wolf, some the roar of a bear. " _You summon me_ _…_ " they wailed, some the cry of an owl, some the chitter of insects. " _You summon me to your world?!_ "

Dalca's laugh echoed through the chamber. "No. I am no mortal. I'm no more able to summon you to the world than you can yourself."

" _Yet you trap me in a circle, like a mortal_ ," they screamed.

"This ain't a fucking light show, lady," Dalca growled. "This circle would summon Drakul himself if I dared. And it would hold him, so long as I breathed."

Millions of eyes all turned to him as a hush fell over the cavern. Dalca smiled a dark smile as he looked at the forms. "Yes… you can escape this prison."

And the power within him burned hotter as he released that which contained him; that which let him pass as human.

Bones creaked as they grew, until he stood a solid seven feet. Muscles thrummed as they thickened, until his entire body rippled with raw strength and power. Skin slithered, shifting in form and hue, until the dark carmine hide had covered every inch of him.

Claws grew from his fingertips as curving talons grew from his toes. Dalca felt his face stretch as his jaw extended, growing out as his teeth sharpened and curved. Smoke puffed from his nostrils as his lips curled angrily. His eyes widened, even as the reptilian iris slits grew longer.

Razor-sharp scales surged up from beneath his skin, running across the crown of his head as the hair disappeared into his ruddy scalp. Ridges trailed down the back of his neck and spine, popping and shifting into place. More sprung along the outside of his humanoid arms and legs, until every inch of his body had become a living weapon.

He was a terrifying sight to all that beheld him.

And that was before the wings and tail sprouted from his back.

The new limbs spasmed as they worked themselves free of his flesh. Long, thin bones covered in taut muscles and dark flesh spread, the leathery skin between them snapping with enough power to cause the air to pulse. His writhing, vicious tail settled, capped in a stinger the size of a sword.

He sighed contentedly as his transformation completed, the sound of it like thunder across the cavern's walls.

"You can leave this place, demon…" Dalca's smile grew into a full grin as his voice growled like the shifting earth. "Over my dead body."

There was a pregnant pause, as the whole of Shyeth looked upon the Zmeu that had trapped it. At the dragonoid form that stood surrounded by flesh and fire, a scarlet light filling his eyes as dark lightning danced across his claws. The unnatural monster from beyond reality looked upon a legendary monster of the world.

Then, as a single whisper, the countless voices breathed together.

" _So be it_."

And a wall of flesh surged toward him.


	9. Chapter 9

Chapter 9

If Dalca was expecting an easy fight, he didn't get it.

As thousands of pounds of flesh surged toward him, Dalca unleashed a black lightning storm unlike anything seen before. Dark light shrouded in a red nimbus filled the cavern, shooting from his outstretched hands to ripple across all of the closest forms. Flesh disappeared in a mist of gore as the lightning raked back and forth, shredding everything it touched to its base components.

When it finally petered off, thousands of pounds of flesh still awaited him.

Dalca's claws burned hot as he tore at the xenografts. Although, truth be told, he could hardly call them that anymore. No longer did they look like a conglomeration of creatures. Instead, they were just writhing piles of bony, teeth-filled flesh.

What might have once been intestines wrapped around one of Dalca's arms, allowing a balled mass of broken bone-shards to pull itself forward. Dalca twisted his arm, and the long ridge of scales along his skin tore the flesh asunder. A backward swipe of his claws ripped apart the rest, and then he was on to the next, and the one after that.

Winged creatures fell at him from above, their shapes like something Lovecraft would have dreamed. More tentacles formed of guts and veins snapped around his head, trying to ensnare him.

In response, Dalca inhaled deeply, and then unleashed a torrent of fiery dragon's breath. The flames cut through everything in their path, before washing out over the ceiling of the grotto.

And still more came, wave after endless wave of flesh and bone and claw and teeth.

Dalca burned and slashed and disintegrated everything, and still there was more.

"The kids couldn't have sacrificed this many creatures," he gasped, unable to comprehend the sheer mass of rotting and diseased tissue that awaited him.

" _They did not_ ," the inhuman voice of inhuman forms replied, seeming nonplussed by the battle that raged.

"Impossible," Dalca breathed as he swiped through something sporting too many eyes to count. "You can't summon yourself."

" _True_ ," Shyeth replied. " _But once they used the old man in a ritual, I was given a body with mortal power to use as my own_."

Dalca tried thinking that through, but found that he couldn't. There was just too much demanding his attention, what with a python sized earthworm of flesh covered in bones trying to chomp on his tail. The barb took care of that, but then there was more waiting.

"So," he finally managed, as he unleashed another black lightning storm. When it ended, he was pleased to see that he was finally making progress. The mass of bodies seemed to be thinning. "You camped Ol' Frank somewhere and had him churning out spells? Just to sacrifice more flesh to the parts of you that were already here?"

" _Of course_ ," Shyeth's voices replied, sounding from somewhere else. The bodies around Dalca had stopped trying to reply, and concentrated on breaking through his tough hide. " _The book contains a spell to summon beasts to use in the rituals._ " The collective mass seemed to breath a disappointed sigh. " _So much time wasted running around chasing things, when they could have just brought them to the cave with a few words. But while the children were off, I had the old man learn the spell, and just in time. It provided me with the bodies I required._ "

"So where is Ol' Frank now?" Dalca asked, suddenly worried that something might have escaped the summoning spell. He was pretty sure he'd accounted for all of the kids, and quite a few of the parents' bodies had already turned up. But if Frank was still alive enough to resist the summoning as a free willed creature…

" _He is here_ ," Shyeth confirmed, unintentionally allaying Dalca's fears. " _You will see the product of his efforts shortly. And you will see the more_ _…_ _suitable body, that I have crafted for myself_."

"Efforts?" Dalca asked, growing more alarmed. "Body?"

" _I was surprised to see you_ ," Shyeth said. " _I had thought all of the dragons were gone from the world_."

"There aren't many left," Dalca admitted. "You might say we're an endangered species."

"Every _species is endangered_ ," Shyeth replied with a dark laugh. " _Even the Great Dragons_."

Dalca snorted at that, even as he leapt at a writhing mass of flesh. His super-heated claws tore through it, and then he was on to the next. "You can't even manage to defeat me," he said. "What makes you think you could take one of them?"

An echoing laughter was the only response.

Checking his position in the cavern, Dalca confirmed he wasn't anywhere near the circle's perimeter. He wasn't in danger of accidentally breaking it. Knowing that, he slammed one clawed hand down to the ground and sent power out.

Fire erupted from the earth in a twenty foot diameter, setting everything around him ablaze. Beastly howls and snorts sounded as the bodies burned, and Dalca lashed out with black lightning at anything that survived.

When the last of them stopped writhing, he looked for the next wave, only to realize there wasn't one.

As he'd fought, the fires in the fissures he'd created had waned, before slowly tapering out. Only those around the edge, marking the boundary of the spell-worked circle, still burned with any intensity.

The fading light had left much of the cavern shrouded in darkness. It was nearly impossible to track the movements of the chimeras using thermal vision, given how little heat they gave off. Dalca turned about, looking for what might be lurking. But nothing came.

"Where are you?" Dalca muttered. He was surrounded by burned and charred flesh, but nothing that moved. Nothing that seemed possessed by Shyeth.

Cautious, Dalca dropped to a knee. Placing a hand on the earth, he poured more power into the ground, which in turn caused the fissures to brighten.

As the light spread across the cavern, the hunched form of Shyeth was illuminated.

Dalca stared at the large mass, all too familiar in its form. Rage filled him as Shyeth rose, her own tail and wings snapping out to mimic him.

" _What do you think of_ this, _Zmeu?_ " the Outsider called mockingly. " _I thought I should familiarize myself with the form, so that I_ _'_ _d be ready once I claim your body for myself_."

The demon had been studying Dalca as they fought, and worked hard to duplicate his form. Flesh and bone had been shaped to match his appearance from horned crown to tail. The demon was improving its control over flesh, and only the faint scars outlined where disparate fleshes met.

It was an impressive facsimile of Dalca's form. Only the materials were different; whereas Dalca's flesh was hardened hide, Shyeth's was simply skin. Where Dalca sported sharpened scale, Shyeth's wore broken bone.

" _You have impressed me, little Zmeu_ ," she goaded, a crooked smile twisting a familiar face into something disgusting and wrong. " _I will take pride in preserving your flesh. It will serve me well, as I work to unmake your world from the inside_."

"You've seen the last of this world, demon," Dalca growled, his breath hot enough to roast the air as it escaped his long snout. "I will burn every last inch of flesh from this cavern, until nothing but ash remains."

" _How impressive_ ," Shyeth said as she stalked forward. There was almost a feminine movement to the body, although Dalca knew that the demon lacked any true gender. It had most likely assumed a feminine tone with the boys, all to better manipulate them. And now it mocked him, seeking any advantage it could get. " _And how do you plan to do that, little Zmeu_ _…"_ she goaded as her smile widened, _"…_ _without your power?_ "

Before Dalca could wonder at what she meant, a thin line of energy shot out from somewhere behind her. The air itself swirled just inside his own circle as another ring was carved into the cavern floor. The spell moved quickly, completing its journey as it wrapped around him.

And as soon as it closed, Dalca felt his power slip away.

He gasped and staggered as he felt something akin to a mortal threshold wrap around him. It enveloped him wholly, to the point that he found it difficult to breath.

" _So powerful_ ," Shyeth mocked. " _And yet so weak. Mortals have so many spells, so many rituals. So many ways of confining that which is greater than them_." A rumbling sound escaped her profane lips as her head rocked back in laughter.

"What is this?" Dalca gasped, even as he fell to a knee. The tension on his skin was tight and growing tighter. He tried to rise, and found the air thicker than water. It was as if he were suddenly in the depths of the ocean; the pressure alone was enough to crush him.

" _Just as you have confined me here, I have confined you_ ," Shyeth gloated. Dalca forced his head to turn, to see the circle carved within his own fiery brand. " _Whilst you fought futilely, I set my servitor to task creating my own circle. One paired with another spell from the book. One that confines creatures like you; weakens you_."

"You… can't perform… mortal magics…" Dalca insisted.

" _Of_ course _I can_ _'_ _t_ ," Shyeth laughed. " _That is what the old man is for._ "

It was then that Shyeth shifted to reveal O' Frank standing behind her. His slack gaze was disturbing, and his breathing looked like nothing more than a bad habit he hadn't quite yet broken. But other than looking gaunt and lifeless, he was untouched by the flesh shaper. His body was his own.

" _I have sustained him as well as I can_ ," the demon confessed. " _I had thought him still independent enough to escape your circle, but it seems that is not so. Too much of me resides within; enough to summon him here; enough keep him from escaping_." Shyeth's lips peeled back into another deathly grin. " _But enough of him remains to work simple mortal magics. To summon sacrifices, and ensnare you._ _"_

 _Her head turned to him, and Dalca saw that the old man was busy preparing another spell._ _"_ _Now he will sacrifice you to me, so that I can take your flesh."_ Her unnatural eyes shifted back around. _"_ _And when we leave here, I will have him share the book with others. Others that will complete the final spells, and bring me forth fully into this world_."

Which would be bad. Really bad. If she were difficult to deal with now, she'd be all but impossible to banish if she came forth fully into reality.

As it was, Dalca knew she needed flesh to sustain her. If the last of the flesh she'd claimed was destroyed, she would lose her tenuous grip on the world. The gates would close on her, so to speak, and that would be that.

But if her summoning ritual were completed, she wouldn't just be reaching through the breach in reality to manipulate the world; she'd be _in_ it. Formless and free to travel the globe, taking what she wanted. Even if Dalca destroyed every body she possessed, she could move on, find another, and begin again.

That couldn't be allowed to happen.

Dalca shot a glance at the circle he'd created. When she'd restrained his power, the fires had dipped lower, but they still burned. They were self-sustained, and would last until dawn, if not longer thanks to their location in the subterranean grotto.

But it was only a matter of time until the ward fell. Then she'd be free.

And for the moment, Dalca himself was not.

He gasped as he fell to the cavern floor, the pressure around him more than he could bear. His body spasmed as the threshold spell took its toll. Flesh rippled painfully as his body began to shrink down. Scale and hide gave way to weak flesh. His claws became nothing more than fingers as his wings and tail sank back beneath his skin.

The spell was binding too much of his power. And with it, his ability to maintain his true form.

He hissed out an agonized breath as the transformation completed. When it was done, he looked just as he had when he'd entered the cavern. Naked, weak, and all too human.

" _Now_ ," Shyeth said from beneath her Zmeu lips. " _Now I shall claim what is mine_."

The pale beast's wings snapped as Shyeth flew forward with preternatural speed. Dalca barely managed to dive to one side as she soared past, her barbed tail flickering toward him as he rolled.

The tip caught his thigh, and sliced a gouge into his skin.

"Well fuck," Dalca exclaimed through gritted teeth as he forced himself up. Sizzling blood dribbled from the wound, where it steamed as it pooled on the cavern floor.

He couldn't recall the last time he'd bled. Not that easily. The cocoon surrounding him was so thorough, so complete, that the reflexive transformation of his skin had failed. Flesh that would not part but for the rarest of blades had been flayed open by a jagged fucking antler.

" _So fragile are the creatures of this world,_ " Shyeth said, her large body swaying as her eyes focused on the wound. " _So short your lives_. _Even the greatest of you fall in time_."

"Hey, if you don't like it here, why don't you stay where you are?" Dalca asked as he limped backward. He tried concentrating on the wound, to try and force it closed. But the flesh remained torn. Dalca found that with entirely too much effort, he could trigger the change in the skin around the gash, forcing it into its reptilian hide. But as soon as he let his concentration slip, the flesh reverted to its weaker form.

" _We shall remake the world into something to our liking_ ," Shyeth hissed as she prepared for another pass. " _We shall slaughter the weak, and those that we spare shall be slaves at our feet!_ "

"I thought you guys only had tentacles!" Dalca shouted as Shyeth burst into motion. Even with his power stripped from him, Dalca's form was still faster and stronger than anything a mortal could hope to aspire to. But he couldn't move fast enough. The demon crashed into him at blinding speed, and Dalca felt the unfamiliar sting of real pain as he was thrown across the cavern. His body slammed into Frank's circle, only to rebound as the spell refused to let him pass its threshold.

The demon was there as he fell toward the turf, and her tail whipped around to strike him in his side. The blow sent him flying again, and he tumbled end over end, scraping and cutting his flesh across the shattered ground.

Dalca managed to get his head up, and saw the key to his salvation a mere dozen feet away. Ol' Frank knelt on the cavern floor, preparing the sacrificial spell that would surrender Dalca's flesh to the demon. But with his self of preservation gone along with most of his coherent reasoning, he hadn't done the simplest thing to protect himself.

He'd created a circle to bind Dalca, but had left himself _inside_ of it. Where Dalca's power could still reach him.

And if Ol' Frank died, so too would the spell that bound Dalca.

Dalca lifted one arm and sent what power he could into it, invoking a fire spell. He knew he didn't have enough in him for something more powerful, like a black lightning spell. But it wouldn't take much to destroy the man. He poured what he had left into his hand, even as Shyeth soared closer, realizing the danger.

The barest hint of light shone in Dalca's fingers for an instant, and then the spell failed.

A laugh broke through Shyeth's reptilian lips as she slammed a fist down on Dalca's helpless form.

" _Perhaps I shall not bother with your flesh after all_ ," she gloated as blow after blow rained down. " _Surely there are tougher things to be found in this world._ "

Dalca shielded himself as well as he could. There was no way he could keep up with the assault; he wasn't fast enough to trigger his skin's transformation to counter each blow. The demon was moving with the speed of cougar and punching with the strength of a bear. She had fueled her component parts with sympathetic bonds. That power would fade now that the animals had all been destroyed, but there'd be enough to finish the job.

Rather than trying to defend against the attack, Dalca did the only thing he could. He poured all of his concentration and effort into one limb, triggering the transformation enough to turn his hand into that of a clawed beast.

"Is this tough enough for you?" Dalca growled as he slashed his arm at one of the demon's. His razor-sharp talons tore through the inbound flesh, sinking almost all the way through the meat of the forearm.

Shyeth had coated much of her flesh in broken bone fragments, to try and provide herself with some form of protection. The pieces mimicked the tougher scales of his hide, but they were no match for his claws. The beast nearly lost the limb with one swipe.

The demon howled, more from frustration than pain, and Dalca used the moment to slash at the form above him. A reversed swipe of his claws resulted in more flesh being torn from the faux-Zmeu body. Congealed blood flew from clotted veins along the demon's gut.

Before Dalca could press the attack, a pale hand made from any number of claws and talons shot down, grasping Dalca's leg. He had only a moment to brace himself before the demon threw him again, his body spinning around as it flew the dozens of yards to the far side of the circle. Far away from Ol' Frank.

Once again Dalca rebounded off the barrier as its numbing power refused him passage.

When he could manage, Dalca pushed himself up from the cavern floor. Shyeth was moving as well, although she did not approach. Instead she kept herself positioned between Dalca and Ol' Frank, as she reevaluated just how much of a threat he posed.

Dalca in turn did the same.

As far as he could tell, the two were at a stand-still. Dalca's body could still take a beating, and with effort he could eventually tear the demon's form to pieces. But Shyeth wouldn't stand still while he did that, and she might be able to land a critical blow while he was vulnerable. Either could fall to the other.

In the meantime, Ol' Frank would be finishing the sacrifice.

And then Dalca's long life would finally be at an end, even if his body continued on.

Regardless of how long he'd lived, Dalca wasn't ready to die. Not for this.

"Fine," he said. "You win."

Shyeth's shuffling stopped at that, her head tilting curiously.

"This job isn't worth it," Dalca muttered as he spat his own blood from between his broke lips.

" _Job?_ " Shyeth asked, her eyes narrowed with suspicion.

"Yeah," Dalca replied as stretched, testing to see what may or may not be broken. "Someone paid me to take you out. But, frankly, it's just not worth it. It wasn't worth the effort I put in so far, and it's definitely not worth expending any more of my energy."

Shyeth's form shifted, her weight moving back and forth between her feet. " _You lie_."

"No, I'm not," Dalca said. "I'm being completely honest. I mean, I charge a certain monetary minimum, you know?" he said, rubbing his torn fingertips together in the universal sign of money. "But that's just to pay expenses. And to make sure I have spending cash between jobs. The real pay-out is in mortal sacrifices."

" _Sacrifices?_ " Shyeth repeated, as if she didn't understand the meaning of the word.

"Yeah, kind of like what you need," Dalca said. "I feed off of mortals. Can't live without them. And normally I charge the client a certain… shall we say, tribute? For doing a job, I get a certain number of lives." Dalca shrugged. "You know what they offered me for _this_ job?"

Shyeth stare mutely at Dalca as he strolled closer. There might have been the barest of limps in his gate. The demon noted it as she kept her suspicious eyes on him, awaiting a trap. She didn't hazard a guess, and instead shifted again to keep herself between him and Ol' Frank.

"I'll tell you," he said. "I'm allowed to consume anyone directly involved in this. No bystanders, no innocent civilians. Just those that have had contact with you and me."

Shyeth grinned at that. " _That is why they shall ultimately fail. They have no sense of purpose. In the end, they will defeat themselves. They will sacrifice one another to spare their own lives, and doom their world in the process._ "

"Disgusting, right?" Dalca said, his voice filled with honest scorn. "Part of the reason I can't stand them. I mean, I _have_ to eat them. _Have_ to. But they just kill _themselves_ without any reason, and let all of that power go to waste. And they call _me_ a monster."

Shyeth considered his words. " _You have been deceived. None who see me shall survive. No payment shall be issued_."

"Well, none except for the girl I brought to snack on later," Dalca corrected her with a shrug.

The demon's blasphemous eyes studied Dalca, as if reconsidering. Her immortal mind considered him as he stood before her, bloodied and bruised.

" _Very well,_ _"_ Shyeth said, her voice dripping with arrogance and deceit as she looked down on her vanquished foe. _"_ _Perhaps you can be of some use. Lower your circle and beg for your pitiful life, and I will allow you to serve me. I will even let you have the girl; I will find others._ "

Dalca grimaced, ignoring her offer. "See, that's the problem. I only get to eat her as payment for doing the job. If I let you go, I don't have permission to eat her."

Shyeth's head tilted again in confusion. " _I do not understand._ "

Dalca shrugged. "Long story short, a powerful wizard cursed me. Got me by the short hairs a long time ago. I can't feed on anyone unless a mortal offers them up first." Dalca paused. "Oh, in case you didn't know, 'short hairs' means the hairs down here?" he explained as he gestured at his crotch. "It hurts to pull on those." He paused again. "Not that you'd know, seeing as you and hair don't seem to get along."

Shyeth's eyes narrowed in disgust. " _I have no need of a gelded monster_."

It was Dalca's turn to frown. "I wasn't offering."

" _I tire of your wordplay!_ " Shyeth snapped, her body tensing as she prepared to finish things. " _You have conceded victory to me. Serve or die, those are your only two choices_."

Dalca's frown turned into an embarrassed grimace. "Oh, you thought I was saying _you_ _'_ _d_ won?"

A deep growl escaped Shyeth's stolen lips. " _Who—_ " she began—

— _When there was nothing left but ash, Dalca retrieved the sword and strode toward the hole in the ground. Just short of it, he sank the blade into the earth, where it sizzled and melted the snow. When it was cool enough, he removed the warden_ _'_ _s cloak and draped it over the hilt. The rest of his clothing joined it._

 _Dalca stood before the dimly lit passage, nude save for the checkered tattoo along his left side. He looked down into the dark space where an immortal evil awaited him._

 _Then, weaponless and alone, he started his descent into the darkness._

 _He paused a few steps in._ _"_ _Shit. I'm an idiot." He looked back into the dark woods. "Hey, Mara, you around?"_

 _The water vâlvă appeared after a moment. "Of course. You said to watch for any escaping chimeras."_

 _"_ _Change of plans," Dalca said. "I just remembered that idiot Garth gave me the demon's name."_

 _Mara realized what that meant._ _"_ _You can summon it,_ all _of it, and keep it confined in a circle._ _"_

 _"_ _Exactly," he said. "Which means you don't have to stay out here."_

 _Mara_ _'_ _s grin was tiny but fierce. "Then I shall accompany you."_

 _"_ _Great."_

 _"_ _And likely save your life," she added._

 _Dalca snorted at that,_ _"_ _I doubt that."_

 _"_ _We shall see."_

 _"_ _You are helpless without me, my lord."_

 _Dalca rolled his eyes as he resumed his descent—_

 _—_ as Mara appeared on Frank's shoulder, and sank her claws into his neck.

Dalca couldn't quite see what happened, seeing as Shyeth still stood between him and the man. But he didn't need to. He'd seen it before, and had even witnessed a preview in the motel room.

Within seconds, what was left of Ol' Frank Lee was so much red paint.

Shyeth turned as her puppet exploded across her back. " _What—_ "

Which was her last mistake. With Frank dead, his circle died with him. And as it went, the pressure restricting Dalca snapped away. Power surged back into him, and he rode the wave of it into a full transformation. His leap turned into a wing assisted dart across the cavern, closing the distance between him and the demon in a flash.

By the time Shyeth had circled back around, she was facing a fully transformed and pissed off Zmeu.

Dalca roared as he unleashed a blast of fiery dragon's breath. Flames engulfed the pale and weak form of the demon, even as the true-born Zmeu drove his claws into her chest and bore her to the ground. Black lightning ripped across her blasphemous form as he tore into her, a furious roar accompanying another wave of fire.

" ** _NO!_** " the demon from Outside screamed as her flesh dissolved into cinder and ash. She tried to resist him, but her body was no match for the power he wielded. Her false claws scraped uselessly at his hardened hide, until he tired of that and tore her arms from their sockets.

Shyeth, Servant to the Corrupter of Flesh, howled one last time as Dalca unleashed a storm of black lightning and scarlet fire across what remained of her earthly form.

And then the last of her collapsed into ash, as the dragon burned every last trace of the demon from existence.


	10. Chapter 10

Chapter 10

"If you hadn't evaporated _all of the water_ , I could have acted sooner."

Dalca just rolled his eyes and continued the climb out of the grotto.

He bore Mara's gloating and chastisements as the two made their way to the surface. It hadn't taken long to confirm every last remnant of Shyeth had been destroyed, and then Dalca had broken the circle and begun the climb, all while the water vâlvă touted her own virtues and lamented his failures.

"You should have realized the chimeras were carving a circle around you," Mara continued.

"I was a little preoccupied," Dalca replied.

"Helpless without me," she repeated.

Dalca shook his head, but let her haver her moment. As the two emerged from the grotto, it was to find a terrified Jean Wilson waiting with the Luger and sword in hand. Jean fired the pistol before Dalca had cleared the path through the roots. The enchanted round struck him in the chest as he was still climbing out.

No pretty fireball erupted as it hit. No pyrotechnics accompanied the bullet. The spell simply unleashed a storm of kinetic energy that had been stored within the round.

Dalca grunted as raw power ripped across his chest. With his power restored, Dalca's body reacted reflexively to protect him. Every inch of his skin hardened into the reptilian hide as the spell whipped about in a violent whirlwind. But despite the protective form saving him from the worst of it, the explosive force was enough to fling him back down the hole.

He brought a hand up as he slammed into the exposed roots, anticipating the next attack before he'd regained his balance. Power thrummed out from his palm as Jean completed her advance on the submerged entrance.

Just as the girl began to pull the trigger a second time, a dark dome of black light sprung into existence between them. The shimmering wall of obsidian was enshrouded with the same ultrascarlet nimbus as the unraveling spells, for it was simply another manifestation of the same thing.

The unraveling shield was costly in terms of power, but it could stop almost everything. Even enchanted blades struggled with it. The second round struck the wall and went no further, exploding on the surface and reflecting the kinetic storm back at the shooter.

Luckily for the girl, the unraveling nature of the spell destroyed most of the enchantments on the projectile. The force that ricocheted back at her was little more than a violent wind, which sent Jean sprawling even as Dalca leapt from the hole with unnatural speed, the shield spell snapping out of existence as he passed through it.

The girl was shaken by the blow, but recovered quickly. Her hand rose as Dalca did, the Luger pointed at his head.

And then her wrist exploded in a curtain of blood as Mara flickered into sight, her claws and tail shredding the girl's flesh.

Jean screamed as her grip on the gun failed, and the weapon tumbled to the ground. She fell to her knees in the snow, but maintained enough clarity to keep hold of the sword. Her wounded arm was cradled against her belly as she tried lifting the blade, but the weight of it was too much for her to manage.

She knelt there as Dalca strode forward, her tear-streaked face defiant as she awaited her fate.

Dalca glanced to one side, where he saw the brew kit he'd salvaged sitting on a bare spot of turf. "See, I told you I left it in the tunnel. She must have come down to retrieve it. I'm not going crazy." Mara just rolled her eyes.

"I was going to help you!" the girl screamed. "I felt bad for letting you go face that… that demon alone! Only _you_ _'_ _re one, too!_ "

Dalca looked at the pitiful wretch huddling in the snow. She'd had a rough few days, and now the hero she thought that'd come to save her had revealed himself to be just another villain.

"You saw that, did you?" he asked softly.

"Of course I saw it!" she screamed, her eyes furious. "I saw all of it! I saw what you are!"

Dalca doubted she'd seen everything. If she had, she would have been long gone. Or maybe she thought running was futile. He'd had her blood, after all. Maybe she thought the only chance she had was killing him as he emerged.

Not an unsound strategy. But ultimately futile.

He sighed. "That's… unfortunate. But unavoidable, I suppose."

The girl screamed as he went for her.

* * *

Just before dawn, a quickly outmatched White River Fire Department had to respond to three raging fires that erupted simultaneously across the small town.

Their first priorities were the police station and motel. The former was vacant save for Night Officer Tremblay, who was missing when they finally declared the place safe enough to enter. The latter was evacuated quickly, the few occupants being hastily sent to the second motel down the road while they battled the blazes from the office and one guest room. There was no sign of the office clerk that had been working the night shift.

The last fire to be extinguished was the one at the Wilson residence. Isolated at the end of the road, only the one neighboring house was in any danger. But the ever-present snow made sure to extinguish any arrant cinders that drifted from the inferno until the firemen managed to smother the blaze.

The police added the Wilson's neighbor Mr. Morris to the list of missing persons. When the feds arrived later that morning, they met the locals at a small secondary building, where every officer and volunteer had gathered to begin the futile search.

The video surveillance tapes at the precinct had been destroyed in the fire, so they had no idea what might have happened to Tremblay. The computer was similarly lost, and the technician was unable to recover any data from the hard-drive. Without it, they had no way of knowing what the missing officer had been up to prior to his disappearance.

Reports of a mild earthquake eventually led investigators to a hillside west of town. Perplexed by the sudden appearance of a sinkhole, a geologist was brought in to investigate. All they were able to determine was that an old cavern had collapsed.

Some tied the strange event to the missing persons case, and speculated that some or all of them might have been inside a grotto rumored to be in that area. Calculations were made, and it was determined that the cost of digging up the land was too great for unsubstantiated rumor. Ground penetrating radar was brought in, but the images never revealed anything even remotely human.

Rumor and speculation lingered for a while before finally petering out. News crews came and went, as did the public's interest. In time, not even the townspeople spoke of that one night in winter, or the people that had gone missing.

In the spring, the land thawed, nature bloomed, and White River rolled with the tide.

* * *

Dalca waited in a dark place.

He didn't have to wait long.

"Is it done?" the cloaked wizard asked without preamble as he appeared in a dim shaft of light.

"Breach sealed," Dalca replied lazily.

"Did something come through?" the man hidden behind a dark cowl pressed.

"Part of the way," Dalca confirmed. "But I took care of it. There's nothing left."

"Witnesses?"

"No survivors in the town," Dalca assured him. "You'll probably hear about it over the next few days."

"How many dead?" the wizard asked coldly.

Dalca did the math. "Seventeen."

The robed man seemed to sigh. "How many did the demon kill, and how many were because of you?"

Dalca smiled as he reached a hand out in the real world. His fingers dipped into a glass, the tips staining red with spirit-infused blood. With some minor effort, he made sure the gesture played out in the dark place as well, allowing the robed man to watch as he sucked the blood of Jean Wilson from his fingertips.

"A monster never eats and tells, Little Hawk."

The man bristled, and Dalca was sure he'd finally pushed things too far. But the wizard was in his debt for the moment, and they had an agreement.

And wizards always keep their word, whether they want to or not.

"Payment will be delivered shortly," the man growled out, his distorted voice doing nothing to disguise his contempt.

"And what of this information?" Dalca asked, quick to remind the man lest he forget.

"The details are in route," the wizard said. "It's in regard to your family."

Dalca sat up at that. "You know what happened to Nicolai."

The robed head bobbed. "Last summer he went on a fire-bird hunt in Chicago. He was killed by a Kenku prince and some locals. I have the names of those involved."

A genuine grin spread across Dalca's face. "The family will hardly stand for that."

The cloak nodded again. "They won't act quickly in Chicago. The local warden has some power, and from what I've learned, is favored by those with more."

"Was this wizard involved in Nicolai's death?" Dalca asked.

"No."

Dalca thought back on their first conversation. "This is the new warden, yes? The one you didn't trust to get the job done?"

"Yes," the wizard replied.

"Well," Dalca mused. "The family will eventually seek retribution. The Kenku prince can be taken anywhere, but these locals… they'll bide their time."

"Those were my thoughts," the cloaked wizard confirmed. "Which means you know where they'll be, eventually."

"You're right, Little Hawk," Dalca said with a smile. "This might very well have been worth all the hassle."

Rather than replying, the wizard killed his end of the connection. After a moment, Dalca did the same.

He opened his eyes in the real world, and looked around the cabin of the private jet he'd reserved.

After hastily leaving White River, he'd called his contact, who had purged any record of Eren Marina from the RCMP database. He and Mara had made sure there were no traces of the identity left in the town. With the officer and hotel clerk dead, no-one even knew to look for him. Now he would leave the country under another name, one with no connection what-so-ever to the events of the town.

Dalca looked down at Mara as she worked on adding a new tattoo scale to his flesh. The needle she used glinted brightly, its magics keeping his skin in its more vulnerable state. The blood she used to stain the memory into his flesh was his own, and would not fade.

At the sight of the needle, Dalca's smile faded. Despite appearances, Zmeu weren't invulnerable. The demon had reminded him of that. Even the royal family's more powerful Balaur form was tender beneath a blade with the right enchantments.

He knew that from experience. He eyed several of the scale tattoos, recalling just how he'd earned them. And just why he'd been banished so long ago.

Power thrummed into existence in the cabin just as all of the window shades snapped down. Dalca felt magical energy build across the plane's aisle, and idly looked over as a pair of floating green eyes appeared. There was a feline cast to them, one that Dalca recognized on sight.

"Greetings, Dubhlainn," a disembodied voice called, the words rolling through invisible lips.

"Stalcadhkin," Dalca replied, unsurprised by the wizard's choice in messenger. He'd used him before. Or perhaps the mortal hadn't been the one to decide.

He'd only been a middle man, after all.

"Indeed," the voice sounded as the feline eyes tilted and turned to watch Mara work.

The water vâlvă didn't turn, but her tail twitched as she hissed in the direction of the mostly invisible malk. Her response elicited a pleased purr from the unseen visitor.

"You have something for me?" Dalca asked.

"Of course," Stalcadhkin replied. "My Queen was most pleased to learn of your success." The sound of fluttering paper preceded the appearance of a small sheet. It curled and floated through the air, before coming to a rest on Dalca's outstretched hand. "Payment, as promised."

Dalca's eyes played over the list of those that had killed a Zmeu prince. One of the participants, a Hecatean Hag, was already dead. That left the Kenku prince, a Fear Dearg, and two mortal practitioners.

Plenty of bait to lure out his prey.

"I wonder if the girl has any power," Dalca mused softly. Each name was accompanied by a small profile, and the girl's mentioned her membership in something called the Ordo Lebes. A coven name, if he'd ever heard one. "Thank your master for her generosity."

That drew a genuine chuckle from the malk as the green eyes faded from view. "Until next time, Dubhlainn."

The sense of the Fae's power disappeared as the shades all popped up again. At the same moment, a cabin door opened further up the aisle. A slim form slowly stepped out of the lavatory, looking around for whomever Dalca had been speaking to. But the malk was gone, and Dalca placed the priceless list aside to turn his attention on his other prize.

The human approached cautiously, watching as Mara put the final touches on the scale.

"Are you ready?" Dalca asked.

The newly minted blond head of Jean Wilson bobbed slowly.

Dalca reached into the pocket of the leather chair, and retrieved the contract Mara had drafted. He watched Jean as she tugged her shirt sleeve down to cover the bandage on her left arm, from where they'd drawn blood minutes earlier. The damage done to her right wrist had already been repaired by the water vâlvă, and only some faint scarring remained to remind her of the dangerous creatures she now accompanied.

"You understand the terms?" he asked as Jean settled into the chair across from him.

The girl nodded again, and took the papers he proffered. "I understand," she said.

Her clothes were wholly different from anything she ever would have worn, and her skin tone had darkened under Mara's ministrations. Her dark eyes were now blue, and Dalca had to admit that she looked better.

For his part, Dalca was now a roughish green-eyed redhead by the name of Tristan Fitzroy. Another personal favorite.

"Explain it," he insisted, remaining as still as possible while Mara worked.

Jean swallowed nervously. "I will enter into your service of my own free will. I will provide you with a pint of spiritually infused blood once every eight weeks. I will obey your orders, and fulfill any demands you make of me. I will tell no-one of our contract, and never work against your interests."

"And in return?" Dalca asked as a smile crept across his face.

"In return, you will spare my life," Jean replied softly. "You will not tell the White Council of my violations of the Laws of Magic." Something glinted in her eyes as she continued, something not unpleased. "You will teach me magic. You will let me use the spellbook, and others that you obtain."

Dalca waived off the details. There was more spelled out in the contract, but the girl had the gist of it. "And when will our contract be terminated?"

The girl's neck straightened. "When either of us declares it so."

"And what will that mean?" Dalca said languidly, relishing the moment.

"If you decide our agreement has ended, you will give me notice before you take my life, and the power within me… should you be able to do so," Jean added, the defiant tone to her words revealing that she believed he might fail in that effort. "If I decide our agreement is ended, I will notify you by attempting to take your life. Should I fail, you will be free to take mine."

Her determination made his smile more genuine. It was always the defiant ones that made him take note.

But the contract was honest, and so too would he be with her.

"I will be sampling your power," Dalca whispered, any hint of humor slipping from his face and voice. "As I consume your spirit, I will know just how powerful you are every eight weeks. I will know the moment you've become a threat to me." His forehead lowered, narrowing his gaze. "I will know it before you will. You will not get the better of me in that."

"I understand."

"No, you don't," Dalca insisted softly. His eyes focused on hers, holding her attention. "When I feed from someone with magical ability, I do more than consume their power. I consume their magic itself, and the knowledge that comes with it."

"Knowledge?" she asked, her voice breaking as she realized she might be in over her head.

"Knowledge is power, after all," Dalca said with a dark smile. "I will consume your power, and the knowledge of how to use it. I will know not only how powerful you are, but exactly what spells you could use against me." The smile faded. "As I said, you will not get the better of me."

The girl swallowed nervously. "But I thought you said others had survived…"

Dalca's face remained impassive. "That is true," he said. "Others thought they were ready. They. Were. Not." Dalca's voice deepened as he let a bit of the Zmeu out, his words sliding through sharpened teeth. "Those that survived their apprenticeship did so upon my desire. They live, but they are still bound to me. They still serve me, even if they wished otherwise."

Jean had frozen like a deer in headlights at the sound of his voice, and the appearance of his slim fangs. But then both were gone in a flash as Dalca smiled a charming smile. "Or maybe I'm wrong. I've been wrong once or twice."

Mara snorted at that, and declared the tattoo done. "Not that you deserve this one," she muttered, clearly still believing herself to have been the linchpin to victory.

Dalca ignored her. "You're in agreement, then?" he asked Jean one last time.

She was smart, at least. He watched her consider her options, bleak as they may be. She understood the consequences, and knew her life might very well be forfeit no matter what she chose.

But eventually, she nodded.

Dalca retrieved the fountain pen from the seat's pouch, as well as the glass of her blood. After drawing the sanguine fluid into the pen, he passed it to her. "Sign thrice."

She did.

When it was done, she started to pass the contract back, but Dalca held up a palm. "Swear it thrice on your power."

She swallowed nervously, but did so. Her voice was timid at first, but her confidence grew by the time she finished.

Then it was his turn.

The girl's blood was ejected back into the glass, and a fresh draw was supplied from the bowl Mara had worked from. Dalca quickly signed the contract in his own blood, just as she had, and then swore thrice.

When it was done, he passed the paperwork to Mara, who whisked it away for safekeeping.

As she did, the plane began to taxi out to the runway. Dalca glanced out the window, and wasn't sorry to see the last of Canada for a while.

Several minutes passed, until Jean finally grew impatient. "When do we begin?"

"Soon enough," Dalca assured her. "After Mara has removed the last of the modifications from the book, it will be returned to you." She'd also be removing any spells that might get the girl in trouble, or those that might cause Dalca trouble. But Jean didn't need to know that.

The girl nodded, and as Dalca sipped from the glass of her blood, he could taste her excitement.

Jean Wilson was twisted, to be sure. She'd lost the only family she'd had days earlier. Her father was dead, and her absent mother left to believe her daughter was lost forever. Jean had lost her home, and all of her possessions save for her brew kit. She'd watched mortals and monsters die, and had killed a few of the latter herself.

And yet there she was, agreeing to work with another.

She'd seen what Dalca was, and was willing to enter into his service in exchange for sweet breath and sweeter power.

The two things humans desired most.

He hadn't lied to the girl. In truth, he was sworn to kill her. But the harvest from the job had been slim, consisting of only the officer and the hotel clerk. There was no way Dalca could restore his reserves from draining them and the girl in one sitting.

Instead, he'd offered her a stay of execution.

To her, it was an opportunity to survive, and grow in knowledge and power while under the protection of her new master. For him, it was a regular source of spiritual power. One that would free him from the necessity of taking quite as many mortal jobs. One that would allow him to pursue other things, and right long-standing wrongs.

It was almost too easy, considering how humans had romanticized dragons over the years. She wanted to believe that he was more than just a killer. And perhaps the reputation of the species was mistaken; perhaps there was some good in him, something resembling human that she could trust.

Jean was no fool, though, nor would Dalca suffer her if she was. She knew the danger.

She was not the first he'd taken under his tutelage, and she would hardly be the last. There were always those that believed themselves the hero of the story, the one that would survive what others had not. She thought perhaps that she could win her freedom.

But only two mortals had ever gotten the best of Dalca. A fact that cursed him to that very day.

"Where are we going?" she finally asked, as Dalca lost himself in memories.

"Copenhagen," he replied as the plane picked up speed. "I've got a job to do, and a lead on a beautiful townhome that will be up for sale soon."

And despite her worries, despite her fears, the little girl from the middle of nowhere smiled as the private plane took off for exotic locales, where she would learn magic at the hands of an ancient being, grow in power, and one day set out on her own.

Well, the last wasn't guaranteed. But the girl had to hope. Dalca wouldn't deny her that.

And in the meantime, he'd harvest her power, growing stronger as she did. He'd replenish the reserves he'd tapped casting so many spells. So much power spent, all to close a breach, to preserve the reality he preferred over the chaotic end the Outsiders would bring if they ever succeeded.

He would wait. Wait to settle old scores that had already waited centuries. Wait to pay off a debt that bound him to those he did not wish to serve. Wait to find a cure for the curse that plagued him, preventing him from reaching his full potential.

He would wait for the day his accursed family strayed too far from home, seeking their vengeance against those that had slain his cousin.

When they finally did, Dalca would be waiting.

And the streets of Chicago would run red with their blood.


End file.
